.

.

This is but one horrific example of the tactics used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to stifle legitimate dissent and violate the civil rights of political groups that the administration dislikes. Along with the anti-war movement, the Nixon White House targeted the civil rights movement for disruption, using on-campus informants to infiltrate and in many cases to disrupt legal protests and activism. This coloring book, which was purported to be from the Black Panthers, had actually been rejected by them when it was brought to them by a man later revealed to have intelligence connections. Not to be troubled by the fact that the Panthers found the coloring book revolting, the FBI added even more offensive illustrations, and mass mailed it across America. It so infuriated the white population that they stopped listening to the legitimate grievances of the black people. While it can be argued that such an action did not technically violate the right of the Black Panthers to free

.

.

You are electric. Your brain is a super-continent only partially charted. Your mind’s eye is fire-hosing garbled and complex equations, proofs, and logical dead-ends, and will do so for something like the next 10 hours, possibly longer. You are diving through bottomless fractals and honeycombs. You’re scaling lattices and gratings as tall as mountains, and now you’re tracing the filigrees and fretwork of the Relief of Time. You’re plucking noise out of thin air, damnit, spreading the sonic detritus over your person like some strange sort of salve. You look down at your hands only to see how they’ve melted to the floor in small, fleshy puddles. You turn to your trip sitter, a trusted friend who appears now to be spewing fire so as to beat back a gaggle of ankle-biting, animatronic elves. The walls are breathing, you swear it. You’re tripping.

.

.

.

.

Tang, a restaurant chef in Donghu town, Changchun, Jilin Province who is helping his boss raise the turtle, explained he got the idea to introduce the pet to tobacco one day after he discovered it being hurt by a chicken bone. As he plucked the bone from its belly, the turtle snapped at him, upon which he was inspired to try inserting a cigarette. Now the turtle ‘restlessly’ paces back and forth if it doesn’t get a smoke, and chases after Tang when he lights up, said the report.

.

.

The doctor applies some local anaesthetic, makes a small pinhole in the base of the scrotum, reaches in with a pair of very thin forceps, and pulls out the small white vas deferens tube. Then, the doctor injects the polymer gel (called Vasalgel here in the US), pushes the vas deferens back inside, repeats the process for the other vas deferens, puts a Band-Aid over the small hole, and the man is on his way.

.

.

There’s always been a lot of tripping in movies, and man, is it hilarious. People trip all the time. Why, just the other day, I had dropped my backpack on the floor of my apartment right when I walked in, and as I circled back around really quickly I ended up stepping right into … Oh. OHHH. That type of tripping. The one with hallucinogenic drugs. Okay, got it. Yeah, that type of tripping is funny, too. And hey, that’s in a bunch of movies as well! Like, say, this week’s “This is the End.” Or so we hear. We’ve counted down for you the Top 15 “tripping” scenes in movies, ranked in order of … trippiest? We guess?

.

.

A survey released Thursday found nearly one in ten smart­phone owners admitted to having used their phone during sex. Overall, nine percent of those surveyed said they had used their smartphone during sex. Young adults were particularly comfortable with multitasking during intercourse. Among those ages 18 to 34, one in five admitted to using their smartphone amid coitus.

.

.

When Alexander Pera, a former manager of a steak house in Lincolnshire, Illinois, was arrested last week, police say he had an unusual motivation for his alleged misdeeds. Pera was charged with stealing the identities of 50 customers and former employees of the restaurant to finance trips to Disney World — known, of course, as the “happiest place on earth.” The Lincolnshire Police Department said he used fraudulently obtained gift cards, cash and prepaid credit cards worth $50,000 to pay for two Disney cruises and 15 Disney World trips over five months.

.

.

.

.

The newest twist on the legendary saying seems to go something like this: He robs asphalt from the city and fills in the poor holes that plague the streets. And while a “Pothole Robin Hood” he may very well be to his supporters, Ron Chane won’t be getting spiritual advice from Friar Tuck anytime soon…and Jackson, Miss., most definitely isn’t Sherwood Forest. Because Chane—who’s made a name for himself lately by taking what he says is asphalt from the city of Jackson so he and his girlfriend can fill its potholes—is under police investigation for his actions.

.

.

KY Intense Arousal gel is relatively new to the market. It’s billed as a product that can “heighten sensitivity and satisfaction.” Unfortunately, when some of the product spilled in an Alabama post office on Tuesday morning, employees didn’t know what the substance was. All it heightened was a safety alert. The building was evacuated and a hazardous materials team came in to dispose of the mysterious liquid.

.

.

A look at the plans…for Sky City One reveal that the maximum width of each unit of the building will be just 3.9 meters, or 12.8 feet. That’s the width of a “single-wide” mobile home in the U.S. Save a dizzyingly tall interior atrium extending from the first to the 170th floor, any interior spaces wider than that will be interrupted by the steel columns that define the edge of each pre-fabricated unit.

.

.

Jon Mikl Thor made one of the campiest attempts at a rocker persona that I’m personally familiar with—and that includes my beloved Handsome Dick Manitoba and New York Dolls. A former Canadian bodybuilder (and onetime Mr. USA), Jon Mikl Thor decided to parlay his, er, natural stage presence into a musical career, fronting for the band THOR in 1973.

.

.

Behold Jeju Loveland! Located in Jeju Island, the erotic theme park is home to over 140 saucy, silly, and downright funny sculptures that all have one thing in common: sex. No wonder the park is 18-and-up only. (There is a kid-friendly recreation area where adults can drop off their young ones while they go look at giant dicks.) Loveland opened back in 2004 after art school grads began creating these interesting monuments to bumping uglies. The theme park is way over the top, which seems to invite visitors to take goofy pictures:

“The young man gestured toward my chest and said ‘are those real or fake?’,” recalls the customer. “I was dumbfounded… He repeated the question again, totally unaware that he was being offensive.”

.

.

The third and final installment of “The Art of Punk,” MOCA-TV‘s great web series that looks at the increasingly historically important graphic design of the punk era. This time around, Jello Biafra and Winston Smith talk about the “look” of Dead Kennedys’ posters, handbills and record covers and explain how the logo came about. There’s a wonderful moment here when Biafra—generously giving credit where it’s historically due—explains his “aha!” moment, when he realized that collaborating creatively with Smith would allow him to present foldouts, posters and booklets ala Crass, but funny.

.

.

In the dozen years since the 9/11 attacks, we’ve watched as a classified new legal regime for government surveillance has been hashed out, local police forces have become heavily armed military-type units and a whole new layer of bureaucracy has hatched to provide us with an abundance of “homeland security.” Proponents of this build-up argue that it’s made us safer. They point to hundreds of foiled plots to make their case. But Trevor Aaronson, author ofThe Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism, dug into these supposedly dastardly plots and found that they are much less than meets the eye.

.

.

A Kobe man has been arrested for what Facebook users see as a unique and somewhat ingenious crime. Hirai Yasuomi (26), was reported to police after someone discovered him lying face-up in a street gutter so that he was able to look up the skirts of women passing by. While most people point out that what he did is certainly perverted and deserves punishment, netizens also praised his enthusiasm and ability to put his dastardly plans into action.

Hairy leggings meant to keep unwanted male attention at bay are all the rage among girls in China. That’s right. Leggings covered in hair.

.

.

A $509,840 grant by the National Institutes of Health will pay for a study that will send text messages in “gay lingo” to methamphetamine addicts to try to persuade them to use fewer drugs and more condoms. The study began in February.

.

.

“I was there in the water in total darkness just thinking it’s the end. I kept thinking the water was going to fill up the room but it did not,” he said. “I was so hungry but mostly so, so thirsty. The salt water took the skin off my tongue.” “I could perceive the dead bodies of my crew were nearby. I could smell them. The fish came in and began eating the bodies. I could hear the sound.” But after 60 hours, Mr Harrison heard the sound of knocking.

.

.

Biker culture came to the Vatican on Sunday as Pope Francis blessed thousands of Harley-Davidsons and their riders celebrating the manufacturer’s 110th anniversary with a loud parade and plenty of leather. Thundering Harley engines nearly drowned out the Latin recitation of the “Our Father” prayer that accompanied Francis as he greeted the crowd before Mass. Standing in his open-top jeep, Francis drove up the main boulevard leading to St. Peter’s Square, blessing the thousands of people in what was a giant Harley parking lot.

.

.

“After class one day, I went into the equipment store in the gymnasium to tidy up. The door had been left open, and when I looked inside, a male pupil and a female pupil had their faces close together and were kind of fumbling around. Could it be bullying? I wondered, but when I had a good look, the boy was licking the girl’s eye! Surprised, a shouted “What are you doing? Stop it at once!” and the two of them were so shocked they jumped apart. The girl burst into tears, and the boy just went bright red and was shaken up. At any rate, to try to calm them down I took them to the janitor’s room and listened to their story.”

A Turkish customs official waved Emily Harris through customs at Antalya airport—after stamping a passport identifying her as a unicorn. Mom Nicky Harris, from Cwmbran, South Wales, said: ‘The passport doesn’t even look real—it’s got gold teddy bears on the front.’

.

.

It is clear from the report that the Union-Tribune and the Guardian grossly “mis-headlined” the NAS’s findings. The tuna had an estimated 7.7 nano-sieverts [the sievert is a standard measure of the biological impacts of radiation] per 7-ounce serving. Since no radiation exposure of any kind is “safe,” headlines writers declaring the risk is “nil” and the tuna “safe” had not done the slightest bit of digging.

.

.

The trainer in the 18 second video has not been identified, nor has the dolphin, however it is assumed that the dolphin is (or was, granted it is still alive) trained for Artificial Insemination. This is assumed because in the video the trainer places his hand around the opening near the males penile slit (a cue for the dolphin to present it’s penis), it is then that the dolphin (inverted) exposes his penis to the trainer and the trainer then proceeds to suck on the tip until the dolphin ejaculates in his mouth. Following the dolphins successful act it is given a cue, the common “whistle blow” signaling a job well done. The video is then ended.

.

.

Soylent looks as appetizing as it sounds. The combination of its off-white color, opacity and viscosity made it look—sorry to be gross here—like watered-down semen. Tiny specs of something brown and no doubt highly nutritious floated in the liquid. Taking a sip, it was actually not distasteful, as long as I blocked out all thoughts of bodily fluid. (This was hard to do; perhaps Soylent could improve my ability to concentrate on things other than semen while drinking Soylent.) Soylent tastes like the homemade nontoxic Play-Doh you made, and sometimes ate, as a kid. Slightly sweet and earthy with a strong yeasty aftertaste.

.

.

Two life coaches who hosted a radio show called “The Pursuit of Happiness” apparently committed suicide together in their Brooklyn apartment, police said. Motivational speaker John Littig, 48, and his common-law psychotherapist wife, Lynne Rosen, 46, were found with plastic bags over their heads and a tube attached to a canister of helium, according to police.

.

.

Marijuana has long been accused of being a gateway to deadlier vices. But could cannabis be a swinging door that might also lead people away from hard drugs? That’s what this capital city is trying to find out. In a controversial public health project, Bogota will supply marijuana to 300 addicts of bazuco, a cheap cocaine derivative that generates crack-like highs and is as addictive as heroin.

.

.

If an online seller sends you photos of an item, run them through a malware scanner first — at least according to the FBI. A new warning issued by the bureau suggests that many buyers have fallen victim to malware scams that involve what seem to be innocuous photo attachments. Photos containing malware can crop up when dealing with shady sellers on services like Craigslist. A seller will list an expensive item, like a car, for an amount of money that just skirts the line of “too-good-to-be-true.” The one catch is that the seller only provides photos upon request.

.

.

The paper reports that the town council of Brunete, located about 20 miles from Madrid, has undertaken a complex effort to crack down on the disrespectful dog owners. Twenty volunteers have been enlisted to approach dog owners who leave their pet’s poop behind, and to strike up a conversation with the goal of finding out the name of the dog. “With the name of the dog and the breed it was possible to identify the owner from the registered pet database held in the town hall,” a spokesman from the council told the Telegraph. Once the owner’s address was confirmed, the dog poop is scooped up, placed in a box containing the town hall’s insignia and delivered via courier to the owner’s home. And to top it all off, the box is labeled, “Lost Property.”

.

.

About 10,000 species of birds have reduced or absent external genitalia as adults. Many have normal penises as embryos, but as they develop, their penises stop growing and shrink away. (Despite that, male birds still manage to fertilize female birds through internal insemination, just like humans. We’ll get to how in a moment.) To study how male birds lose their penises, the UF researchers examined the embryonic development of birds with penises (ducks and emus) and birds without penises (chicks), among other creatures. What they found was that a critical gene called Bmp4 switches on, causing developing genitals to wither away. In other birds like ducks and emus, that gene stays switched off, allowing their penises to grow fully. (In some birds, they grow a little too fully: certain species of water fowl, like ducks, have such large phalluses

.

.

“You can’t go to Disney without a tour concierge,’’ she sniffed. “This is how the 1 percent does Disney.” The woman said she hired a Dream Tours guide to escort her, her husband and their 1-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter through the park in a motorized scooter with a “handicapped” sign on it. The group was sent straight to an auxiliary entrance at the front of each attraction.

.

.

Nigerian police say they have rescued six pregnant girls from child traffickers who were planning to sell their babies. Two men and a woman have been arrested in the case, which is the second so-called baby factory to be uncovered in a week. Last week, at least 23 girls and four babies were found in Umuaka, in eastern Nigeria’s Imo State.

.

.

This little known story has met a just conclusion, as Sophia Stewart, African American author of The Matrix will finally receive her just due from the copyright infringement of her original work!!! A six-year dispute has ended involving Sophia Stewart, the Wachowski Brothers, Joel Silver and Warner Brothers. Stewart’s allegations, involving copyright infringement and racketeering, were received and acknowledged by the Central District of California, Judge Margaret Morrow presiding. Stewart, a New Yorker who has resided in Salt Lake City for the past five years, will recover damages from the films, The Matrix I, II and III, as well as The Terminator and its sequels. She will soon receive one of the biggest payoffs in the history of Hollywood , as the gross receipts of both films and their sequels total over 2.5 billion dollars.

.

.

Wireless operators have access to an unprecedented volume of information about users’ real-world activities, but for years these massive data troves were put to little use other than for internal planning and marketing. This data is under lock and key no more. Under pressure to seek new revenue streams (see “AT&T Looks to Outside Developers for Innovation”), a growing number of mobile carriers are now carefully mining, packaging, and repurposing their subscriber data to create powerful statistics about how people are moving about in the real world.

.

.

A British judge on Thursday sentenced a businessman who sold fake bomb detectors to 10 years in jail, saying the millionaire had shown a cavalier disregard for potentially fatal consequences. James McCormick made an estimated 50 million pounds ($77.8 million) from the sales of his non-working detectors – which were based on a novelty golf ball finder – to countries including Iraq, Belgium, Niger and Saudi Arabia. McCormick, 57, was convicted of three counts of fraud last month and sentenced Thursday at the Old Bailey court in London, where Judge Richard Hone called his profits from a “callous confidence trick” obscene and outrageous.

.

.

United Nations Twitter Account Follows Porn Star

The official United Nations Twitter account has 1,462,609 followers (or it did at the time this article was published) and only follows 537 accounts – a pretty exclusive club to say the least. For the most part, the 537 accounts @UN follows include world governments, dozens of UN special missions and international heads of states. Buried within that list, however, ConstitutionSchool.com was shocked to discover one account which seemed oddly out of place: “Penelope Black Diamond,” a German porn star whose Twitter username is @BigBustyStar.

‘So, rather surprisingly, we can say that life on earth 1,900 million years ago would have smelled a lot like rotten eggs.’

.

.

It’s no secret that we’re monitored continuously on the Internet. Some of the company names you know, such as Google and Facebook. Others hide in the background as you move about the Internet. There are browser plugins that show you who is tracking you. One Atlantic editor found 105 companies tracking him during one 36-hour period. Add data from your cell phone (who you talk to, your location), your credit cards (what you buy, from whom you buy it), and the dozens of other times you interact with a computer daily, we live in a surveillance state beyond the dreams of Orwell. It’s all corporate data, compiled and correlated, bought and sold. And increasingly, the government is doing the buying. Some of this is collected using National Security Letters (NSLs). These give the government the ability to demand an enormous amount of personal data about people for very speculative reasons, with neither probable cause nor judicial oversight. Data on these secretive orders is obviously scant,

.

.

Dr Nitzan said: ‘All of the patients developed psychotic symptoms related to the situation, including delusions regarding the person behind the screen and their connection through the computer. ‘Two patients began to feel vulnerable as a result of sharing private information, and one even experienced tactile hallucinations, believing that the person beyond the screen was physically touching her. ‘Some of the problematic features of the internet relate to issues of geographical and spatial distortion, the absence of non-verbal cues, and the tendency to idealise the person with whom someone is communicating, becoming intimate without ever meeting face-to-face.’ He added that mental health professionals should not overlook the internet’s influence when speaking to patients. ‘When you ask somebody about their social life, it’s very sensible to ask about Facebook and social networking habits, as well as internet use.

.

.

The State Department of the United States recently released its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2012, posing as “the world judge of human rights” again. As in previous years, the reports are full of carping and irresponsible remarks on the human rights situation in more than 190 countries and regions including China. However, the U.S. turned a blind eye to its own woeful human rights situation and never said a word about it. Facts show that there are serious human rights problems in the U.S. which incur extensive criticism in the world. The Human Rights Record of the U.S. in 2012 is hereby prepared to reveal the true human rights situation of the U.S. to people across the world by simply laying down some facts.

.

.

A hidden epidemic is poisoning America. The toxins are in the air we breathe and the water we drink, in the walls of our homes and the furniture within them. We can’t escape it in our cars. It’s in cities and suburbs. It afflicts rich and poor, young and old. And there’s a reason why you’ve never read about it in the newspaper or seen a report on the nightly news: it has no name — and no antidote. The culprit behind this silent killer is lead. And vinyl. And formaldehyde. And asbestos. And Bisphenol A. And polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). And thousands more innovations brought to us by the industries that once promised “better living through chemistry,” but instead produced a toxic stew that has made every American a guinea pig and has turned the United States into one grand unnatural experiment.

.

.

In 1907, six different villages were built in the Jardin d’Agronomie Tropicale, representing all the corners of the French colonial empire at the time– Madagascar, Indochine, Sudan, Congo, Tunisia and Morocco. The villages and their pavillions were built to recreate the life and culture as it was in their original habitats. This included mimicking the architecture, importing the agriculture and appallingly, inhabiting the replica houses with people, brought to Paris from the faraway territories.

.

.

It’s been dubbed the most expensive prison on Earth and President Barack Obama cited the cost this week as one of many reasons to shut down the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, which burns through some $900,000 per prisoner annually. The Pentagon estimates it spends about $150 million each year to operate the prison and military court system at the U.S. Naval Base in Cuba, which was set up 11 years ago to house foreign terrorism suspects. With 166 inmates currently in custody, that amounts to an annual cost of $903,614 per prisoner. By comparison, super-maximum security prisons in the United States spend about $60,000 to $70,000 at most to house their inmates, analysts say. And the average cost across all federal prisons is about $30,000, they say.

.

.

And in the response to Supreme, he argued that McSweeney had been putting out Supreme Bitch shirts since 2004, when she was 22. Nine years later, Jebbia and Supreme have attempted to sue her for millions of dollars, arguing copyright infringement against the brand. A brand that, by the way, has definitely incorporated other people and other companies’ design elements itself. One of those people? American conceptual artist Barbara Kruger, whose work explicitly inspired not just Supreme’s ubiquitous red-and-white logo (see above), but so many other brands like it, and legions of other fairly famous artists as well. But in the past, Kruger—who now teaches at UCLA—has been pretty quiet on the connections, deferring questions about the commercial entrepreneurs who’ve culled from and profited off of the template she inarguably set. But we thought we’d give it a shot, and Complex reached out to Kruger anyway, asking her what she made of the lawsuit, as well as both McSweeney and Jebbia’s p

.

.

When it comes to sex, Germans are not known for being squeamish. Yet a sex-education book that has been circulating in Berlin elementary schools has some parents up in arms. The book, “Where Do You Come From?” (“Wo kommst du her?”), which is recommended for ages 5 and up, shows a couple, Lisa and Lars, in various stages of arousal. In one illustration, Lisa puts a condom on Lars’ erect penis. Another shows them having intercourse. The text also veers toward the explicit. “When it’s so good that it can’t get any better, Lisa and Lars have an orgasm,” it reads. And, finally: “The vagina and penis feel nice and tingly and warm.”

.

.

“We wanted to give people a sense of not only where to put their sexual organs, but where to put their arms and legs,” Ribner says. “If you have never seen a movie, never read a book, how are you supposed to know what you do?”

.

.

By adding all those sub-categories up, imperfect as they may be, it’s clear that the rate of reported overdoses the U.S. more than doubled between 1999 and 2010. About half of those additional deaths are in the pharmaceuticals category, which the CDC has written about before. Nearly three-quarters of the pharmaceuticals deaths are opioid analgesics—prescription painkillers like OxyContin and Vicodin. And while cocaine, heroin and alcohol are all responsible for enough deaths to warrant their own stripes on the chart, many popular illegal drugs—including marijuana and LSD—are such a tiny blip as to be invisible.

.

.

“The baby was naked. They strapped tape around her mouth to keep her from screaming. Then they placed her on a board. After calling on the spirits they threw her on the bonfire alive,” said Miguel Ampuero, of the Police investigative Unit, Chile’s equivalent of the FBI. Authorities said the 12-member sect was formed in 2005 and was led by Ramon Gustavo Castillo Gaete, 36, who remains at large. “Everyone in this sect was a professional,” Ampuero said. “We have someone who was a veterinarian and who worked as a flight attendant, we have a filmmaker, a draftsman. Everyone has a university degree. ” Police said Castillo Gaete, the ringleader, was last seen traveling to Peru to buy ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic brew plant that he used to control the members of the rite.

.

.

SO, the bottom line is this: If you are in a place where you hear steady, and sustained, and nearby (lets call that, for some technical reasons, anything less than 800 meters) gunfire, do these things: Go to your basement. You are cool there. If you don’t have a basement, go to the other side of the house from the firing, and leave, heading away from the firing. Do not stop for a mile. If you do not think that you can leave, get on the ground floor, as far from the firing as possible, and place something solid between you and the firing. Solid is something like a bathtub, a car (engine block), a couple of concrete walls (single layer brick…nope). If you are high up (say 4rd story or higher) just get away from the side of the building where the firing is taking place. You will, mostly, be protected by the thick concrete of the structure. 8. But for cripes sake, do not step out on to your front porch and start recording a video on your iPhone, unless you actually have a death-wish

.

.

“Terrorists want media attention, so we give it to them. Unsafe industries don’t want media attention–so we give that to them.” And that’s exactly what’s going on today, in the coverage of the two disasters last week.

5000 people at 4-20 for UCSC. This guy had a booth set up to unveil this guy, shouldn’t have drawn so much attention man!

.

.

“the ringleader of it all, according to the indictment, is Tavon White, a four-year inmate charged with attempted murder. He reportedly made $16,000 in one month off the smuggled contraband. Four corrections officers–Jennifer Owens, Katera Stevenson, Chania Brooks and Tiffany Linder, who are also facing charges — allegedly became impregnated by White since he’s been in jail. Charging documents reveal Owens had ‘Tavon’ tattooed on her neck and Stevenson had ‘Tavon’ tattooed on her wrist.”

.

.

All Planet Infowars Users that are participating in the Dating Freedom Lovers Mission.

.

.

In its report, Elaph said several religious cops deployed through the festival rushed into the UAE pavilion on Sunday and escorted three Emirati delegates out. “A festival official said the three Emiratis were taken out on the grounds they are too handsome and that the Commission members feared female visitors could fall for them,” the news service said, adding that the festival’s management took urgent measures to deport the three to Abu Dhabi.

.

.

Hundreds of poor people waiting outside of a closed grocery store for the possibility of getting the remaining food is not the picture of the “American Dream.” Yet on March 23, outside the Laney Walker Supermarket in Augusta, Ga., that is exactly what happened. Residents filled the parking lot with bags and baskets hoping to get some of the baby food, canned goods, noodles and other non-perishables. But a local church never came to pick up the food, as the store owner prior to the eviction said they had arranged. By the time the people showed up for the food, what was left inside the premises—as with any eviction—came into the ownership of the property holder, SunTrust Bank. The bank ordered the food to be loaded into dumpsters and hauled to a landfill instead of distributed. The people that gathered had to be restrained by police as they saw perfectly good food destroyed. Local Sheriff Richard Roundtree told the news “a potential for a riot was extremely high.”

.

.

10 Biggest Unsolved U.S. Terrorism Cases

1 Wall Street Bombing (September 16,1920) – New York, New York 38 dead, 143 wounded The detonation of a horse-drawn wagon loaded with 45kg of dynamite and more than 200kg of scrap iron in front of the J.P. Morgan offices in New York remains the deadliest unsolved terrorist incident in U.S. history. Federal agents investigated, and dismissed, the possibility of involvement by Soviet saboteurs, the Communist Party USA and the Industrial Workers of the World. Historians believe the bombing may have been engineered by Italian anarchists.

.

.

It’s been known for decades that animals such as chimpanzees seek out medicinal herbs to treat their diseases. But in recent years, the list of animal pharmacists has grown much longer, and it now appears that the practice of animal self-medication is a lot more widespread than previously thought, according to a University of Michigan ecologist and his colleagues.

.

.

“Originally, the dung-covered beans were collected in coffee plantations but more recently, as more people wanted to drink coffee made from beans that had passed through the intestines of this small carnivore, entrepreneurs have begun sticking civets in cages, feeding them coffee beans and recollecting them from the dung for wholesale,” the paper’s author, Chris Shepherd the deputy regional director with anti-wildlife crime NGO TRAFFIC, told mongabay.com. “Reportedly, as demand rose, other civet species were captured and added to these captive civet coffee makers.”

.

.

Police almost never talk about or claim credit for making the arrests. Police make so many because they are easy arrests and because significant constituencies within police departments benefit from the arrests. Police work can be dangerous. Ordinary patrol and narcotics police like the marijuana arrests because they are relatively safe and easy. If an officer stops and searches 10 or 15 young people, one or two of them will likely have a bit of marijuana. All police have arrest quotas and often they can earn much-desired overtime pay by making a marijuana arrest toward the end of a shift. In New York City, arresting people for petty offenses for overtime pay is called “collars for dollars.” Every cop in the city knows that expression. From the officers’ point of view, people possessing marijuana are highly desirable arrestees. As one veteran lieutenant said, people whose only crime is marijuana possession are “clean,” meaning physically clean. Unlike junkies or winos

.

.

In the past few decades, the fortunate among us have recognised the hazards of living with an overabundance of food (obesity, diabetes) and have started to change our diets. But most of us do not yet understand that news is to the mind what sugar is to the body. News is easy to digest. The media feeds us small bites of trivial matter, tidbits that don’t really concern our lives and don’t require thinking. That’s why we experience almost no saturation. Unlike reading books and long magazine articles (which require thinking), we can swallow limitless quantities of news flashes, which are bright-coloured candies for the mind. Today, we have reached the same point in relation to information that we faced 20 years ago in regard to food. We are beginning to recognise how toxic news can be.

.

.

“Super Mario groped the woman,” says Times Square Alliance president Tim Tompkins. “Elmo was ranting anti-Semitic things. Spider-Man punched a woman in the face. Now a kid was attacked by Cookie Monster. And those are just ones where there’s been an arrest! We’ve anecdotally heard there’s a lot more that’s been happening. One of my staff members said an Elmo patted her backside when she was walking through Times Square on a crowded day.” Tompkins also pointed us to a photo of a man dressed as Toy Story’s Woody urinating in a doorway

.

.

BOOTY-OBSESSED Barbie Edwards has spent a fortune on food to get such a huge backside — but now her big butt is making big bucks. The 42-year-old mum claims she has the world’s largest bottom, and says she has used her unique asset to make a whopping £18,000 in the past six months just by BALANCING things on her behind. The colossal rear measures creating a “butt shelf” upon which Barbie can balance trays of food and drink — to the delight of her paying fans. The bouncy blonde is delighted with her shape and is now hoping to persuade Guinness World Records to include a new category for world’s biggest shelf behind. She said: “I used to hate my big hips and bum, but since I’ve been modelling it’s changed the way I feel about myself. My bum shelf has a career all of its own and I wouldn’t change it.”

.

.

So the very bill that Obama last year claimed was “a good first step” and suggested that “we should do even more in the months ahead”, has now been totally revised and stripped of the most important aspects which promote transparency in the new bill that he has just signed yesterday. Instead of doing more to increase transparency, Congress and President Obama have rolled back the very provisions of the bill which helped promote an open government, in a decidedly non-transparent manner (unanimous voice consent, closed-signing by the president).

.

.

The Hocking County Sheriff’s office is trying to get to the bottom of who is responsible for drugging Laurelville Police Chief Mike Berkemeier. Berkemeier says the problem began Easter Sunday when he ate some cake sitting on his kitchen counter. ”I got up in the morning and ate it — the entire thing,” he said. Shortly after eating that cake, Berkemeier says he began to feel sick like never before. ”I thought I was dying,” he said. Berkemeier says all he could think to do was make the short drive from his home to the Laurelville police station for help. ”I don’t remember much of the drive here, even though it’s just a few blocks and was met by a couple of the medics from the fire department,” he said. Berkemeier tells 10TV medics transported him to Berger Hospital in Circleville where doctors performed tests to see what was wrong with him. ”I kept trying to explain to them this wasn’t getting any better. It just got worse,” he said. “I felt like I was out of my mind.”

.

.

Hijacking airplanes with an Android phone

It’s amazing to discover that aviation – an industry where safety is of vital importance and every physical element has one or even two fail-safe mechanisms – is failing to secure the onboard computer, the heart and brain of the plane.

.

.

There is a national crisis of federal employees engaged in the child porn industry and a related epidemic at the state level. I’ve documented two states, Vermont and Maine, that appear to be running state protected child trafficking rings with evidence of cops, judges, lawyers, clergy and government employees covering for each other. This kind of racketeering creates powerful, and extremely profitable, pedophile rings. Money drives the crime. It is estimated that a criminal willing to molest a child in front of a live webcam can earn $1,000 a night. In Kittery Maine, at the “Danish Health Club,” one bust yielded $6.1 million in “door fees” over a five year period with “prostitutes” earning $12 million. Pimps’ earnings were not reported. The “door man” was a retired police officer whose wife worked in back. This bust happened because of one hard-working IRS agent, Rod Giguere.

.

.

So if THC levels are generally high across the board and the other cannabinoids are present only at trace levels, what makes one strain different from another? And why does each marijuana strain impart a distinct psychoactive effect? There must be something else in the plant that influences the quality of the cannabis high. David Watson, the master crafter of the foundational hybrid Skunk #1, was among the first to emphasize the importance of aromatic terpenes for their modifying impact on THC. Terpenes, or terpenoids, are the compounds in cannabis that give the plant its unique smell. THC and the other cannabinoids have no odor, so marijuana’s compelling fragrance depends on which terpenes predominate. It’s the combination of terpenoids and THC that endows each strain with a specific psychoactive flavor.

.

.

Everyone knows the IRS is our nation’s tax collector, but it is also a law enforcement organization tasked with investigating criminal violations of the tax laws. New documents released to the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that the IRS Criminal Tax Division has long taken the position that the IRS can read your emails without a warrant—a practice that one appeals court has said violates the Fourth Amendment (and we think most Americans would agree).

.

.

The discovery of a hidden camera may help solve a series of break-ins at upscale homes in several North Texas cities. “This one has already been camouflaged,” said detective Ben Singleton, holding what looks like a piece of bark that would go unnoticed in most yards. It’s actually a video camera not much bigger than a matchbox, and it’s activated by a motion detector. Such cameras turned up in March planted outside several upscale homes in Dalworthington Gardens. “I’ve never seen anything like this. And most detectives in this area haven’t,” Singleton said. Earlier this month, John Anton discovered the first one near his driveway. “I had no idea what it was,” Anton said. “Very strange.” He took the device to Dalworthington Gardens police. “We tore one of these apart to figure out what it was all about,” Singleton said. The detective said it turned out to be surveillance for a long-running, sophisticated burglary scheme. But at first, police feared it might even be a kidnapping plot to

.

.

Elites tend to believe in a venal, selfish, and essentially monstrous version of human nature, which I sometimes think is their own human nature. I mean, people don’t become incredibly wealthy and powerful by being angelic, necessarily. They believe that only their power keeps the rest of us in line and that when it somehow shrinks away, our seething violence will rise to the surface—that was very clear in Katrina. Timothy Garton Ash and Maureen Dowd and all these other people immediately jumped on the bandwagon and started writing commentaries based on the assumption that the rumors of mass violence during Katrina were true. A lot of people have never understood that the rumors were dispelled and that those things didn’t actually happen; it’s tragic.

.

.

The annual Drug & Alcohol Testing Industry Association (DATIA) conference, held in 2012 in San Antonio, Texas, looks like any other industry gathering. The 600 or so attendees sip their complimentary Starbucks coffee, munch on small plates of muffins and fresh fruit, and backslap old acquaintances as they file into a sprawling Marriott hotel conference hall. They will hear a keynote address by Robert DuPont, who served as drug policy director under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Nothing odd about any of this until you consider that the main subject of the conference is urine.

.

.

Once banned from the world of mainstream comic books by the infamous Comics Code Authority, LGBT characters now have a stronger presence in the world of superhero comics than ever before, with gay and lesbian heroes like Batwoman, Northstar and Green Lantern Alan Scott openly declaring who they are — and even getting married. Today, DC Comics told Wired that it will continue to expand the LGBT diversity of its superhero universe by introducing the first openly transgender character in a mainstream superhero comic.

.

.

A remarkable thing happened in 2008: drug overdose surpassed auto fatalities as the leading cause of accidental death in the United States. Public health officials declared an epidemic, and communities united to battle this new enemy that had left a staggering body count in its wake. The people had a weapon, naloxone, an antidote that reverses opiate overdose, and programs began popping up across the country to provide training and free naloxone to people at risk for overdose. But then Big Pharma stepped in. The same year that naloxone became so critical to saving lives, one pharmaceutical company secured a monopoly on its production and jacked up the prices by 1,100%.

Bet you didn’t think you needed semen pills.

.

.

Riot Toys

.

.

A blackout disabled cooling at four fuel pools last month, an event the company traced to a rat that might have gnawed on power cables and caused a short circuit. Engineers found its scorched body in a damaged switchboard. Tepco has since installed mousetraps at the site and promised to plug holes through which rats and other rodents might enter buildings and gnaw on important equipment. It has also promised to speed up work to install backup power cables to the fuel pools. But Friday afternoon, four workers using wire meshing to seal a space around electric cables caused a ground fault, or the accidental flow of current to the ground. No one was injured, but the ground fault shut off electricity to the cooling system at the No. 3 reactor fuel pool. “We were installing wire nets to keep the rats out. But the end of one of the wires may have momentarily come into contact with a live terminal,” said Masayuki Ono, general manager at Tepco’s Nuclear Power and Plant Siting Division. “…

.

.

People seem to have a love-hate relationship with dogs dressed up like humans, but that hasn’t stopped the Internet from churning out more ridiculous memes. The latest installment: Dogs wearing pantyhose (OK, we’re classing it up a bit, Dis Magazine called it “bitches wearing pantyhose”) is a trend picking up in China, according to Sharp Daily, a Hong Kong news site.

.

.

At the height of his use, the man – known as “Mr A” – was taking 25 tablets a day, Psychosomatics journal revealed. The 37-year-old still had trouble with short-term memory problems seven years after he stopped taking the drug. Doctors at St George’s Hospital, London said Mr A’s case was extreme, but showed ecstasy’s long-term effects. It is possible to become psychologically dependent on the feelings associated with ecstasy but heavy daily use is extremely rare and it is not thought that people can become physically dependent Martin Barnes, DrugScope The doctors said it was the largest reported ecstasy lifetime consumption by one person, the previous being around 2,000 tablets. Writing in Psychosomatics, they say Mr A reported he had used ecstasy between the ages of 21 and 30. For two years, he took five tablets every weekend, rising to an average of 3.5 tablets per day for the next three years, then soaring to 25 tablets a day over the next four years.

.

.

Did you know that there are thousands upon thousands of homeless people that are living underground beneath the streets of major U.S. cities? It is happening in Las Vegas, it is happening in New York City and it is even happening in Kansas City. As the economy crumbles, poverty in the United States isabsolutely exploding and so is homelessness. In addition to the thousands of “tunnel people” living under the streets of America, there are also thousands that are living in tent cities, there are tens of thousands that are living in their vehicles and there are more than a million public school children that do not have a home to go back to at night. The federal government tells us that the recession “is over” and that “things are getting better”, and yet poverty and homelessness in this country continue to rise with no end in sight. So what in the world are things going to look like when the next economic crisis hits?

.

.

Amsterdam is to create “Scum villages” where nuisance neighbours and anti-social tenants will be exiled from the city and rehoused in caravans or containers with “minimal services” under constant police supervision.

.

.

America won’t be repeating that historic one small step anytime soon — not according to NASA chief Charlie Bolden, anyway. “NASA is not going to the Moon with a human as a primary project probably in my lifetime,” Bolden told a joint meeting of the Space Studies Board and the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board in Washington last week

.

.

As many of you may know, and may have heard in the news recently, many of my sermons have deviated from traditional Christian doctrine. I have been accused of altering the ‘message’ to fit my own doctrine and dogma. Others have accused me of preaching ‘feel good Christianity’. I have also been accused of profiting greatly from my ministry, with my books and television deals. Many of their criticisms are legitimate. What they don’t know is that deep down in my heart, for a number of years now, I have been questioning the faith, Christianity and whether Jesus Christ is really my, or anyone’s, ‘savior’. I believe now that the Bible is a fallible, flawed, highly inconsistent history book that has been altered hundreds of times. There is zero evidence the Bible is the holy word of God. In fact, there is zero evidence “God” even exists. No God worth believing in is going to send you to Hell for not believing in him. Not even the worst sinner and scum of the Earth deserves eternal torment

.

.

Witten and a generation of urban latchkey kids who spray-painted their initials all over Manhattan in the 1970s and ’80s and landed in the city’s street art scene are coming of age — middle age, that is.

.

.

On an average, more than a kilogram of heroin was seized every day on the Indo-Pak border adjoining Punjab for the first six months of this year. Records with the Border Security Force (BSF) show that in the first half of 2012, the force has seized a record 197 kilograms of heroin worth nearly Rs 1,000 crore. This is nearly three times more than 68 kgs seized last year. It is also the highest amount of the drug seized in the past five years.

Warner Bros have confirmed that they are working on a prequel to the Jack Nicholson thriller – which contained the famous line, “Heeere’s Johnny.”

.

.

Cheese is the slang name for a mixture of black tar heroin and Tylenol PM. The substances are combined and come out looking much like parmesan cheese. The resulting product is sold for as little as $2 per hit. Kids in the Dallas-area are buying “cheese” with their lunch money, according to media reports. They’re snorting the stuff up their noses – often at school – and dying in alarming numbers, according to the Dallas County medical office. A recent study by the Dallas Independent School district determined that more than 5,000 kids have tried cheese. More than two dozen have died of overdoses. Most, like Mariela, first take the drug in middle school. That’s shocking. Middle school students are being targeted by drug dealers and turned into heroin addicts before they reach high school.

.

.

One day this spring, on the condition that I not reveal any details of its location nor the stringent security measures in place to protect its contents, I entered a hidden vault at the Israel Museum and gazed upon the Aleppo Codex — the oldest, most complete, most accurate text of the Hebrew Bible. The story of how it arrived here, in Jerusalem, is a tale of ancient fears and modern prejudices, one that touches on one of the rawest nerves in Israeli society: the clash of cultures between Jews from Arab countries and the European Jews, or Ashkenazim, who controlled the country during its formative years. And the story of how some 200 pages of the codex went missing — and to this day remain the object of searches carried out around the globe by biblical scholars, private investigators, shadowy businessmen and the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency — is one of the great mysteries in Jewish history.

.

.

As you scan the face on that giant billboard, it may just be scanning your face right back. Increasingly sophisticated digital facial-recognition technology is opening new possibilities in business, marketing, advertising and law enforcement while exacerbating fears about the loss of privacy and the violation of civil liberties. Businesses foresee a day when signs and billboards with face-recognition technology can instantly scan your face and track what other ads you’ve seen recently, adjust their message to your tastes and buying history and even track your birthday or recent home purchase. The FBI and other U.S. law enforcement agencies already are exploring facial-recognition tools to track suspects, quickly single out dangerous people in a crowd or match a grainy security-camera image against a vast database to look for matches.

.

.

Mitt Romney offended Palestinians again today, saying that Israel was more prosperous than Palestine because of its superior culture and the will of God. “You notice such a dramatically stark difference in economic vitality” between Israel and Palestine, Romney said at a fundraiser in Jerusalem today, citing each nation’s per-capita GDP, the AP reports. He went on to say that in considering Israel’s accomplishments “I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things” including the “hand of providence.”

.

.

The essence of the infor­ma­tion war is the timely inter­jec­tion, dis­tor­tion or omis­sion of news events. Reports can min­i­mize, omit or basi­cally bury key news sto­ries that require analy­sis while mag­ni­fy­ing oth­ers which are of lesser impor­tance to the keen, ana­lyt­i­cal mind. While the Bat­man mas­sacre is tragic, the buzz in the so called alter­na­tive media cir­cle is cen­tered around the litany of ongo­ing sto­ries that will be sti­fled in the week to come by the main­stream media’s focus on the Aurora, CO shoot­ing. Beyond that, the analy­sis you read here is not all pre­sented as 100% fact, some con­clu­sions are pre­sented in light of other evi­dence, and where noted, some are spec­u­la­tive based on edu­cated the­ory. In this era of total media bom­bard­ment, to the point of over­load, some events have to be con­sid­ered beyond just what is con­firmed in print or on video and must be eval­u­ated in the full con­text of pos­si­ble human behav­ior.

.

.

The Justice Department is suing a telecommunications company for challenging a request from the Federal Bureau of Investigation for customer information — despite the fact that the law authorizing the request explicitly permits such challenges. According to documents provided by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which is representing the telecom, the company (whose name is one of the many redacted details in the documents) received a national security letter (NSL) in 2011. An NSL is essentially a self-issued search warrant whereby the FBI bypasses the Fourth Amendment and demands information about an individual without bothering to obtain a judge’s consent — and forces the recipient of the letter to keep mum about it because disclosure would allegedly harm national security. NSLs were employed somewhat sparingly prior to 2001 but became widely used — and abused, as the Justice Department’s inspector general reported in 2007 — after the misnamed Patriot Act loosened the require

.

.

.

.

Though increasingly looked down upon here in the U.S. as a sign of slothfulness and low socioeconomic status, routine fast food consumption in some parts of the world is actually considered to be culturally desirable. But as foreigners progressively adopt the American fast-food lifestyle in place of their own native foods, rates of chronic disease are skyrocketing, including in East and Southeast Asia where diabetes and heart disease rates are off the charts. According to a recent study published in the journal Circulation, globalization continues to usher U.S.-style fast food into East Asian countries like Singapore, Malaysia, and Cambodia, where natives, especially those from the younger generations, are quickly adopting things like hamburgers and fries in place of their traditional fare. And based on the data, this Western fast food craze is responsible for a significant uptick in cases of diabetes and heart disease.

.

.

Neurologists working with monkeys at Washington University in St. Louis to decode brain activity have stumbled upon a rather surprising result. While working to demonstrate that multiple parameters can be seen in the firing rate of a single neuron (and that certain parameters are embedded in neurons only if they are needed to solve the immediate task), they also found that they could read their monkeys’ minds. This isn’t exactly ESP, but it is really interesting. The researchers came to find out that by analyzing the activity of large populations of neurons, they could discover what actions the monkeys were planning before they made a single motor movement. By monitoring neural activity, the researchers could essentially see what the monkey was thinking about doing next.

.

.

In a recent interview, Chihuahua state spokesman Guillermo Terrazas Villanueva told Al Jazeera that the CIA and other international “security” outfits “don’t fight drug traffickers.” Instead, Villanueva argued, they try to control and manage the illegal drug market for their own benefit. “It’s like pest control companies, they only control,” Villanueva told the Qatar-based media outlet last month at his office in Juarez. “If you finish off the pests, you are out of a job. If they finish the drug business, they finish their jobs.” Another Mexican official, apparently a mid-level officer with Mexico’s equivalent of the U.S. Department of “Homeland Security,” echoed those remarks, saying he knew that the allegations against the CIA were correct based on talks with American agents in Mexico. “It’s true, they want to control it,” the official told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity.

.

.

What those trying to aggressively market an ever more “exotic sex life” fail to realize is that sexual preferences aren’t shaped by artifice. Buying a leather slapper won’t suddenly give you a penchant for spanking—and let’s face it, if you were really into the idea in the first place, you probably would have gone DIY and just picked up a hairbrush long before now. Making people feel shitty about their vanilla-ness is mainly a capitalist calculation. As any marketing exec knows, the moment people become satisfied is the moment they stop buying stuff.

.

.

A research team from Universidad Autonoma de Madrid and West Virginia University have troubling findings for those who think iris scanning is one of the safest methods of biometric security. Their reverse-engineered, “replicated eye” image was able to bypass iris scanning, fooled into thinking the synthetic image was real and correct. Javier Galbally and his team printed out synthetic images of irises taken from codes of real irises stored in security databases to test iris-scanning vulnerabilities. An iris code is the data stored by recognition systems when they scan a person’s eye. This is information that the researchers could replicate in their synthetic images. A commercial iris system only looks for the iris code and not an actual eye, Galbally noted. He and his team tested their fake irises against a leading commercial-recognition system. In 80 percent of attempts, the scanner believed that the attempt was a real eye.

.

.

Shooter James Holmes even went as far as to take Vicodin, a drug found in Heath Ledger at the time of his death. Vicodin is a powerful pain-killer with morphine-like effects that is used in mind control to “dull out” victims. Is there some kind of ritualistic connection between The Dark Knight, the sacrificial death of Heath Ledger and this new installment of a Batman movie that was “launched” with a mass murder? Is there a reason why this mass-murder, which occurred during the midnight screening of a movie called Dark Knight RISING took place in a city called Aurora, the name Roman goddess of dawn (dawn being the time where the sun begins to rise)? Another interesting fact: Aurora is considered to be the mother of the morning star, also know as the Light Bringer, or Lucifer.

.

.

Social scientists hungry for Facebook’s data may be about to get a taste of it. Nature has learned that the social-networking website is considering giving researchers limited access to the petabytes of data that it has amassed on the preferences and behaviour of its almost one billion users. Outsiders will not get a free run of the data, but the move could quell criticism from social scientists who have complained that the company’s own research on its users cannot be verified. Facebook’s in-house scientists have been involved in publishing more than 30 papers since 2009, covering topics from what drives the spread of information and ideas to the relationship between social-networking activity and loneliness. However, because the company fears breaching its users’ privacy, it does not release the underlying raw data.

.

.

Two of the most common causes of blindness are retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic disease, and macular degeneration, an age-related disorder. Both are characterized by damage to the rod and cone cells in the retina, which robs the eye of its photoreceptors. Treatments for these forms of blindness focuses on restoring the retina’s abilities, and we’ve seen a few examples — stem cell injections, implantations of light-sensitive compounds using viruses, and a whole host of electronic devices and artificial retinas. A chemical called AAQ can also make these damaged cells sensitive to light again, and it wouldn’t require any foreign substances or stem cells.

.

.

The cloud backup guys over at Backupify put together a calculator to help folks estimate the value of their cloud-based Google Gmail web mail accounts. So what’s the average account’s worth? $3,588.85, Backupify’s Jay Garmon writes in a blog post. That’s the value of the time invested in the average Gmail account, given how many emails the average Gmail user has written (5,768), how long it takes to write the average email (one minute, 43 seconds), and the most recent U.S. Depart of Labor statistics on average annual salary ($45,230). In other words, if the average Gmail user were paid to recreate all the Gmail messages he or she’s ever written, it would cost $3,588.85.

.

.

They are a lowly, sturdy food designed for desperate cravings and vending machine convenience. They can endure weeks of neglect and even a mild mashing in a coat pocket or backpack. They are, it should come as no surprise, especially beloved by a similarly hardy but disrespected population: Florida’s prison inmates. Inmates in the Florida prison system buy 270,000 honey buns a month. Across the state, they sell more than tobacco, envelopes and cans of Coke. And they’re just as popular among Tampa Bay’s county jails. In Pasco’s Land O’Lakes Detention Center, they’re outsold only by freeze-dried coffee and ramen noodles. Not only that, these honey buns — so puffy! — have taken on lives of their own among the criminal class: as currency for trades, as bribes for favors, as relievers for stress and substitutes for addiction. They’ve become birthday cakes, hooch wines, last meals — even ingredients in a massive tax fraud. Thanks Jasmine

.

.

Rhonda Roshell Washington, 33, told police her husband was high on PCP when they got into an argument about his drug use at their home in Bryan early Thursday, the Bryan-College Station paper reports. The fight turned physical, she said, and she jabbed him in the hand with her keys. Her husband, however, claimed she became upset about something on his Facebook page and chased him with a knife, stabbing him in the hand.

.

.

This isn’t a story about a skateboarding giant, the UK’s largest skateboard has been created to mark the fact two thirds of children think the Olympics will only be worth watching when more extreme sports like skateboarding are included, obviously. Measuring a staggering seven metres in length, two and half metres in width and at a metre high, the oversized board weighs as much as a baby African elephant – so any ‘ollies’ or ‘kick flips’ are probably out of the question.

.

.

Our lazy embrace of Stewart and Colbert is a testament to our own impoverished comic standards. We have come to accept coy mockery as genuine subversion and snarky mimesis as originality. It would be more accurate to describe our golden age of political comedy as the peak output of a lucrative corporate plantation whose chief export is a cheap and powerful opiate for progressive angst and rage.

.

.

Despite repeated assurances in public and to the Information Commissioner, Google has admitted that it did not in fact delete all the data, which could include passwords and emails, collected over open WiFi networks by its Streetview mapping cars in 2010 in a number of countries around the world. The news means that Britain’s recently reopened investigation into the so-called WiFi snooping could be bolstered by an opportunity to re-examine evidence that the ICO had asked to be destroyed. The ICO has demanded to examine the data “immediately” to look for evidence that it is in fact more extensive than Google had originally claimed, as authorities in America had discovered for data collected there.

.

.

But he also said that, months later, when it came time to set bailout terms for the Too Big To Fail Set, the government just had no other choice but to use Libor. Sure, that’s one way to look at it. Another, less charitable way to look at it is that the Fed was fully aware that Libor was being manipulated lower, and was fine charging an artificially low rate to lend money to banks and to AIG, in what amounted to yet another kind of bailout. Why make life harder for them, right? They had enough problems dealing with the crisis they had created. Raising red flags about Libor might have only made the crisis worse, making it harder for banks to borrow money. But in the process, the government left untold mountains of cash on the table for U.S. taxpayers. Even if Libor was only manipulated a tiny bit lower, these small breaks add up.

.

.

.

.

America treats sex, not violence, as the biggest threat to families and the nation, starting with Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) ratings bestowing action flicks that brutalize half-naked nymphets a PG-13, but anything suggesting female pleasure the deathly NC-17, as happened with the marital cunnilingus scene between Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams in Blue Valentine. A common argument against gay marriage or condom commercials is, “What would I say to my kids,” as if sex talk destroys childhood innocence.

.

.

The control freaks are winning, and they are absolutely killing America. Our founding fathers intended to establish a nation where Americans would be free to pursue “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in an environment where freedom was maximized and government interference was minimized. Unfortunately, our nation has turned away from those principles and is now running 180 degrees in the other direction. For some reason, our political system tends to attract psychotic control freaks that want to micromanage our lives and make most of our decisions for us. These control freaks are actually convinced that freedom and liberty are “dangerous” and that there should be a rule or a regulation for just about everything. This is not just happening on the federal level either. The truth is that the control freaks are often the worst on the local level. When you add up the red tape on all levels of government, we literally have millions of laws, rules and regulations in America

.

.

An email to F-Secure — allegedly sent from an AEOI scientist — detailed the attack, noting that the malware has shut down some of the facility’s automated processes. The rather vague wording of the email leaves a few unanswered questions as to just what parts of the AEOI are in danger, but one piece of information was very clear: The insidious software prompted several of the group’s computers to begin playing the song “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC in the middle of the night, and at full volume.

.

.

A revolutionary discovery is rewriting the history of underwear: Some 600 years ago, women wore bras. The University of Innsbruck said Wednesday that archeologists found four linen bras dating from the Middle Ages in an Austrian castle. Fashion experts describe the find as surprising because the bra had commonly been thought to be only little more than 100 years old as women abandoned the tight corset.

.

.

On Wednesday, Baumgartner took another stratospheric leap, this time from an altitude of more than 18 miles — an estimated 96,640 feet, nearly three times higher than cruising jetliners. He landed safely near Roswell, N.M. His top speed was an estimated 536 mph, said Brian Utley, an official observer on site. It’s the second test jump for Baumgartner from such extreme heights and a personal best. He’s aiming for a record-breaking jump from 125,000 feet, or 23 miles, in another month. He hopes to go supersonic then, breaking the speed of sound with just his body.

.

.

What started out as a joke 35 years ago ended with a Massachusetts man paying off his mortgage using 62,000 pennies. “I’ve never saved anything other than pennies. And it started out as a whim. You know, a penny for the mortgage,” Thomas Daigle told NBC affiliate WHDH-TV of Boston. Daigle, from Milford, Mass., recalled how, after signing the mortgage papers 35 years ago, he found a penny on the ground. He and his wife then joked about collecting pennies to pay off the loan — and the rest is history. Over the next 35 years, Daigle would roll pennies, 50 cents at a time. His bank found out the hard way just how much work that was — it reportedly took tellers two days to unroll the penny cases.

.

.

Reports of odd-colored lobsters used to be rare in the lobster fishing grounds of New England and Atlantic Canada. Normal lobsters are a mottled greenish-brown. But in recent years, accounts of bright blue, orange, yellow, calico, white and even split lobsters – one color on one side, another on the other – have jumped. It’s now common to hear several stories a month of a lobsterman bringing one of the quirky crustaceans to shore.

.

.

A report by a group of civil and human rights attorneys released Wednesday morning paints the clearest picture yet of the New York City police department’s aggressive tactics and over-policing, all of which resulted in the systemic suppression of the basic rights of Occupy protesters. The report, which chronicles events from late September 2011 up to July of 2012, extensively documents numerous ways in which the NYPD acted with excessive force, attempted to intimidate and harass members of the press, expelled activists from public space due to the content of their speech, and ultimately concludes that authorities broke international law in their handling of Occupy Wall Street.

.

.

In 2008, ten times more civilians regular people were killed by cops than cops were killed by perps. In 2011, 72 cops were shot and killed in the entire U.S.; in L.A. County alone, cops shot and killed 54 suspects the same year–22 percent of those people were unarmed. As Scott Reeder reported at Reason this morning, “Farmers, ranchers, commercial fishermen, loggers, garbage collectors, truck drivers, construction workers, pilots, steel workers, roofers, and others are far more likely to face death on the jobs than police or firefighters, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.” And as Choire Sicha wrote earlier this year, “2008 was the ten-year low for police officers being killed, and 2012 is, so far, year-to-date, down 49% from last year.”

.

.

Like virtually all massacre shooters before him, the notorious Batman shooter James Holmes is now reported to have been taking hardcore pharmaceutical drugs. In Holmes’ case, they happen to be the very same drugs that ultimately led to the early death of actor Heath Ledger. With a fix for ‘altering his state of mind’, the ‘Batman shooter’ was heavily hooked on the prescription painkiller Vicodin. Holmes even reportedly dosed up on a pharmaceutical cocktail just before the shooting. Side effects of Vicodin use, even at ‘recommended’ levels which Holmes likely far exceeded, include ‘altered mental states’ and ‘unusual thoughts or behavior’.

.

.

The New York Police Department will soon launch an all-seeing “Domain Awareness System” that combines several streams of information to track both criminals and potential terrorists. New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly says the city developed the software with Microsoft. Kelly says the program combines city-wide video surveillance with law enforcement databases. He says it will be officially unveiled by New York’s mayor as soon as next week.

.

.

According to the Student Press Law Center, which investigated the girls’ arrest, officials in Hood County, Texas, are refusing to say whether the girls (who were arrested July 16) are still being detained. The center’s reporting suggests that the girls have been behind bars for more than a week for the crime of pranking a fellow student on Facebook

.

.

Commonly used baby soaps and shampoos, including products from Johnson & Johnson, Aveeno and CVS, can trigger a positive result on newborns’ marijuana screening tests, according to a recent study. A minute amount of the cleansing products in a urine sample — just 0.1 milliliters or less — was found to cause a positive result.

The military entertainment complex is an old phenomenon that binds Hollywood with the US military. Known as militainment, it serves both parties well. Filmmakers get access to high tech weaponry – helicopters, jet planes and air craft carriers while the Pentagon gets free and positive publicity. The latest offering to come from this relationship is Act of Valor and it takes the collaboration one step further. The producers get more than just equipment — they have cast active-duty military personnel in the lead roles, prompting critics to say the lines have become so blurred that it is hard to see where Hollywood ends and Pentagon propaganda begins. In this week’s feature, the Listening Post’s Nic Muirhead looks at the ties between the US military and Hollywood.

Evansville, Indiana police intent on “sending a message” that online threats against police will not be tolerated organized a massive raid against a forum troll on an online forum. The police decided to bring a TV crew to film their raid against their critic, they also brought a SWAT team. Rather than knock on the accused’s front door, which was wide open, the police instead threw two flash-bang stun grenades through their front window and storm door. Unfortunately, rather than finding the home occupied by a gun-toting cop killer, they found an entirely innocent grandmother and 18-year-old girl, who were both shocked and confused.

Small police departments across America are collecting battlefield-grade arsenals thanks to a program that allows them to get their hands on military surplus equipment – amphibious tanks, night-vision goggles, and even barber chairs or underwear – at virtually no cost, except for shipment and maintenance. Over the last five years, the top 10 beneficiaries of this “Department of Defense Excess Property Program” included small agencies such as the Fairmount Police Department. It serves 7,000 people in northern Georgia and received 17,145 items from the military. The cops in Issaquah, Washington, a town of 30,000 people, acquired more than 37,000 items

That new capability will drive the demand for even more raw data. The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) agency, overseen by the U.S. director of national intelligence, has launched two projects that may help analysts use civilian video from YouTube, Vimeo and other sources. Investigators at the Finder program are studying ways to locate where and when a video was taken based solely on the image itself. That’s hard enough. But researchers at IARPA’s Aladdin are working on an even more challenging task: how to search for “specific events of interest.” If they succeed, analysts could feed in a name, a simple text description or a few sample videos of what they seek—say, “five people wearing backpacks next to a pickup truck”—and get back any number of clips that match the query.

To stop the ‘hate speech’ anarchy, Twitter is considering starting off by blocking the very possibility of replies from so-called ‘non-authoritative’ users, marked out by the absence of a profile picture, followers or bio information, as FT.com reports. This is the first step, but there might be more to come. However, the company’s management is concerned that by installing any kinds of ‘selective’ measures, they may put an end to the unique Twitter-style ‘freedom of tweets’ that has helped Arab revolutions. Anonymity was the key factor that allowed so many users there to join and have their say. “The reason we want to allow pseudonyms is there are lots of places in the world where it’s the only way you’d be able to speak freely,” FT quotes Dick Costolo as saying. Twitter is basically the ‘last harbor’ of anonymity, as it does not have to be linked with such powerful database platforms as Facebook and Google. Silencing trolls may hit those ‘revolutionary’ users as well.

“Well, were you having sex? What are you doing here?” The girl quickly responded “no, no, no, officer no,” the affidavit said. The girl told police she and her friend were just talking. But the man told the girl he “needed to check.” The girl asked “Check what?” “I need to see inside,” he responded. That’s when he ordered her to take off her pants and underwear so he could look for bruising or other evidence of sexual activity. In fear, the affidavit said, she complied. The girl told police she thought it “was the right thing to do” because he was an officer. Her 19-year-friend turned away, unable to watch, according to the affidavit. He told police he heard the man tell the girl “I need you to spread your legs wider so I can see.” The officer then used a flashlight to “inspect” her and told her to pull down her blouse so he could check for bruising, according to the police report. Then he returned the driver’s license to the boy and told them “Go home.”

Two north Florida “animals” are facing child porn charges after photos showing them raping a 4-year-old girl were found on a cell phone they left at a Walmart. Pictures on the phone showed convicted sex offender Alan Johnson, 33, and his girlfriend, Jennifer Sparks, 37, abusing the girl “in every way imaginable,” Lee County Sheriff Mike Scott told WSOC-TV. “My most seasoned detectives here said that its the worst they’ve ever seen,” he said. A shopper found the phone in a shopping cart at a Cape Coral Walmart on June 2 and turned it in, police said.

On Saturday, at midnight Greenwich Mean Time, as June turned into July, the Earth’s official time keepers held their clocks back by a single second in order to keep them in sync with the planet’s daily rotation, and according to reports from across the web, some of the net’s fundamental software platforms — including the Linux operating system and the Java application platform — were unable to cope with the extra second.

A local couple who claim to be Satanists believe they’re a victim of a hate crime and were targeted because of their religious beliefs. Someone cut down a political poster stating, “VOTE SATAN” from their front porch where they live in Mountain View, a suburb of Denver. “We are Satanists… Satanists,” said Luigi Bellaviste. Luigi and Angie Bellaviste belong to the Church of Satan. They even have a Satanic Bible in their home. Thanks Jasmine

Increasingly, smartphones are creating problems in the backcountry, particularly in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, where, officials say, more hikers are skipping basic gear — particularly a map, compass, and flashlight – and relying too heavily on phones with GPS and a slew of gear-like apps, including compasses and trail maps, to bail them out of a jam. “Being prepared for a hike does not mean having your cellphone charged,” said Major Kevin Jordan from the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, which oversees 150 to 180 rescues each year. “To find people with a map and compass is just incredibly rare. It boggles my mind. But when we rescue someone, I hear a lot of regret, a lot of people saying, ‘I should have brought more than my phone, but everywhere I go at home I have cellphone coverage.’ ”

Drug agents removed more than 41,000 marijuana plants from a 40-acre area near Warner Springs in northeastern San Diego County, Drug Enforcement Administration officials announced Monday. The haul, conducted Sunday and Monday, was the largest marijuana seizure on private property in the county’s history, DEA officials said. No arrests were made, but the investigation is continuing, officials said. The removal, from a remote, secluded area called Sunshine Summit, required 35 DEA agents and officers from the multi-agency Narcotics Task Force. Also found on the property were two large water tanks, chemicals for fertilizer, and a 30-round magazine for a semiautomatic weapon. The marijuana removed from the site was estimated to have a wholesale value of $41 million.

✪ Deputy who tried to smuggle drug-stuffed burrito gets 2 years

A former Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy accused of trying to smuggle a burrito stuffed with heroin into a courthouse lockup was sentenced Monday to two years in jail. Henry Marin, who was once portrayed as a dim-witted bumbler on a reality television show that focused on sheriff’s recruits, said nothing as a courtroom deputy handcuffed him and led him away to the type of cell he was once responsible for guarding.

The ‘GM babies’ were born into women who had trouble conceiving their own children. In order to ‘birth’ the babies, extra genes from a female donor were inserted into the women’s eggs before they were fertilized. After conception, scientists fingerprinted 2 of the one-year-old children and confirmed that they inherited DNA from 3 adults — one man and 2 women. What this means is that due to inheriting these extra genes through the genetic modification process, they will now be able to pass them along to their offspring. In other words, these genetically modified babies — if allowed to mate with non-GM humans — could potentially alter the very genetic coding of generations to come. Genetecists state that this genetic modification method may one day be used to create babies “with extra, desired characteristics such as strength or high intelligence.”

Inmates in a Brazilian prison can shave time off their sentences by becoming living sources of green energy. All they need to do is turn the wheel of a bike connected to a power generator. For every 16 hours of pedaling the inmates of the Santa Rita do Sapucaí prison have their sentences reduced by one day, according to a Jornal Nacional report. The generators the prisoners put in motion charge batteries, which are taken to the city center to power some of the street lights. The two bikes installed in the prison are enough to light six bulbs. The reason behind the offer is not to profit from free labor however. Rather it is meant to give inmates an incentive to keep themselves in good shape, says city judge José Henrique Mallmann, who introduced the idea. Thanks Bjarni

Colombia has decriminalized cocaine and marijuana, saying that people cannot be jailed for possessing the drugs for personal use. Anyone caught with less 20 grams (0.705 ounces) of marijuana or one gram (0.035 ounces) of cocaine for personal use will not be prosecuted or detained, but could be required to receive physical or psychological treatment, depending on their level of intoxication, according to Colombia Reports. Colombian Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon said law enforcement would continue its fight against drug trafficking, but would not make further comment.

Do you know how your tax dollars are spent? US radio host Dennis Bernstein and investigative reporter Dave Lindorff illustrate just how much US tax money goes towards the country’s war chest. “People have to realise that 53 cents of every dollar that they are paying into taxes is going to the military to an astonishing figure there is an enormous, enormous amount of money being blown on war an killing and destruction.”

Sixty million euro has been stolen from bank accounts in a massive cyber bank raid after fraudsters raided dozens of financial institutions around the world. According to a joint report by software security firm McAfee and Guardian Analytics, more than 60 firms have suffered from what it has called an “insider level of understanding”. “The fraudsters’ objective in these attacks is to siphon large amounts from high balance accounts, hence the name chosen for this research – Operation High Roller,” the report said. “If all of the attempted fraud campaigns were as successful as the Netherlands example we describe in this report, the total attempted fraud could be as high as 2bn euro (£1.6bn).” The automated malicious software programme was discovered to use servers to process thousands of attempted thefts from both commercial firms and private individuals. The stolen money was then sent to so-called mule accounts in caches of a few hundreds and 100,000 euro (£80,000) at a time.

Nearly every day, and often several times a day, there is fresh news of privacy invasions as companies hone their ability to imperceptibly assemble a vast amount of data about anyone with a smartphone, laptop or credit card. Retailers, search engines, social media sites, news organizations — all want to know as much as they can about their visitors and users so that ads can be targeted as precisely as possible. But data mining, which has become central to the corporate bottom line, can be downright creepy, with companies knowing what you search for, what you buy, which websites you visit, how long you browse — and more. Earlier this year, it was revealed that Target realized a teenage customer was pregnant before her father knew; the firm identifies first-term pregnancies through, among other things, purchases of scent-free products. It’s akin to someone rifling through your wallet, closet or medicine cabinet, but in the digital sphere no one picks your pocket or breaks into your house

As location tracking by cell phone companies becomes increasingly accurate and widespread, the question of who your location data actually belongs to remains unresolved. Privacy activists in the U.S. say the law has not kept pace with developing technology and argue for more stringent privacy standards for cell phone companies. As Matt Blaze, a University of Pennsylvania professor put it, “all of the rules are in a state of enormous uncertainty and flux.” The Obama administration has maintained that mobile phone users have “no reasonable expectation of privacy.” The administration has argued against more stringent standards for police and the FBI to obtain location data.

After being challenged by his lab, the DHS dared Humphreys’ crew to hack into a drone and take command. Much to their chagrin, they did exactly that. Humphrey tells Fox News that for a few hundreds dollar his team was able to “spoof” the GPS system on board the drone, a technique that involves mimicking the actual signals sent to the global positioning device and then eventually tricking the target into following a new set of commands. And, for just $1,000, Humphreys says the spoofer his team assembled was the most advanced one ever built. “Spoofing a GPS receiver on a UAV is just another way of hijacking a plane,” Humphreys tells Fox. The real danger here, however, is that the government is currently considering plans that will allow local law enforcement agencies and other organizations from coast-to-coast to control drones of their own in America’s airspace.

At a hearing yesterday, the Senate Commerce Committee took up the issue of online tracking, the browser-based Do Not Track flag, and, in an unlikely turn of events, cybersecurity. The hearing included testimony from Ohio State University Law School’s Prof. Peter Swire, Mozilla’s Alex Fowler, the Association of National Advertisers’ Bob Liodice, and TechFreedom’s Berin Szoka. While there were a number of heated moments in the hearing, the most surprising was the advertising industry’s claim that respecting consumer choice will harm “cybersecurity.” This new argument from the advertising industry only raises more concerns for the civil liberties implications of online tracking and was, as Rockefeller aptly noted, little more than a “red herring.”

EFF has pressed for legislation to prevent digital book retailers from handing over information about individuals’ reading habits as evidence to law enforcement agencies without a court’s approval. Earlier this year, California instituted the “reader privacy act,” which makes it more difficult for law-enforcement groups to gain access to consumers’ digital reading records. Under the new law, agencies must get a court order before they can require digital booksellers to turn over information revealing which books their customers have browsed, purchased, read and underlined. The American Civil Liberties Union and EFF, which partnered with Google and other organizations to push for the legislation, are now seeking to enact similar laws in other states. Bruce Schneier, a cyber-security expert and author, worries that readers may steer clear of digital books on sensitive subjects such as health, sexuality and security—including his own works—out of fear that their reading is being tracked

✪ What is causing the outbreak of Flesh Eating Diseases?

However, some people have surmised that the use of antibiotics in our food supply is the main culprit while the overuse of antibiotics by doctors further exasperates the problem. In the 1940’s farmers began treating their livestock with antibiotics. It was soon discovered that if you fed antibiotics to your chickens, pigs and cows on a regular basis that the animals would get fatter quicker and with less feed. In order to compete with the other factory farms farmers started feeding their animals antibiotics everyday! And as we all know by now, the more antibiotics one takes whether through a prescription or through eating antibiotic laden meat, the more resistant one gets. As a side note I also wonder if eating all this antibiotic laden meat has contributed to the obesity epidemic in America..I mean if large doses of antibiotics cause animals to get fat while eating less, wouldn’t that do the same in humans?

Asian eyes are traditionally thinner and narrower than Caucasian or African-American eyes, which tend to be rounder and wider. Asian eyes tend to resemble the oval shape of almonds, although some can look even narrower than that. Most Asians have only a single eyelid (meaning their eyelids don’t have a prominent crease). You can make your eyes look Asian by using makeup or undergoing plastic surgery.

There are many reasons why you might want to look Asian: maybe you’re playing an Asian person in a school play, maybe you’re going to an anime convention and want to look like a certain character, maybe you’re dressing up for a costume party or for Halloween, or maybe you just want to change your appearance for fun, or to disguise your appearance to evade the law. In any case, this article will allow you to (sort of) go from looking White to looking Asian, without much fuss or money needed.

As the sprawling surveillance site being constructed by the National Security Agency (NSA) in Utah grows larger and nearer completion every day, the domestic spy service remains tightlipped about just how much and what kind of personal electronic data they have already collected and collated. Not only does the NSA refuse to provide such information, it insists that it cannot be forced to.

John and Jessie Bates and their 7-year-old son, Tyler, began experiencing mysterious health problems months after after moving into a new home in Suquamish, Washington in March 2007. Tyler was having trouble breathing, Jessie developed a bizarre rash, and John was “perpetually sick,” according to My Fox Phoenix. Though a standard inspection found no problems, the family suspected the house itself was the culprit. A year and a half later, a neighbor revealed the home’s sordid secret: the previous occupant had used it as a meth lab. Even more certain that the building was behind their ailments, the Bates began ripping up the floors and walls. They found “iodine-like staining on the walls and human feces under the floor,” Jessie told Fox News.

Madrid’s own Spok, Neko and Rosh bombed Gran Via, the main street of “Mad City” using an innovative technique which consists of cutting vinyl from a massive block-long advertisement and then peeling off their letters. This new subtractive method makes a permanent mark on the street with minimum effort. Quick, smooth and real nice work from these three amigos.

After inviting students to submit personal stories of the abuse of prescription drugs for academic advantage, The Times received almost 200 submissions. While a majority focused on the prevalence of these drugs on college campuses, many wrote about their increasing appearance in high schools, the focus of our article on Sunday. We have highlighted about 30 of the submissions below, almost all written by current high school students or recent graduates. In often vivid detail — snorting their own pills, stealing pills from friends — the students described an issue that they found upsetting, valuable, dangerous and, above all else, real. Most of them claimed that it was a problem rooted not in drugs per se, but with the pressure that compelled some youngsters to use them.

Theft is followed closely by sex crimes and child pornography charges, with 14 such incidents listed in Blackburn’s report. Six TSA employees were charged with possession of child pornography; one of them got caught because he “uploaded explicit pictures of young girls to an Internet site on which he also posted a photograph of himself in his TSA uniform,” the report notes. Eight others were charged variously with child molestation, rape (including child rape), and even running a prostitution ring. It’s not hard to figure out why persons possessing such proclivities would seek jobs where they would be able to ogle and grope other people’s private parts with impunity.

About those “extended overdraft” fees: consumer advocates have noted that they are not unlike shady payday loans that charge consumers a tremendous amount of interest to get some needed cash in the short term. The Consumer Federation of America recently compared the two practices, and came up with some disturbing findings: As it has before, the Consumer Federation reported the cost at each bank of a $100 overdraft repaid two weeks later as if it were a short-term loan. It said the best deal, at Citibank, was equivalent to a loan with an annual percentage rate of 884 percent. Some banks, including PNC and RBS Citizens, charge more than 2,000 percent. Another thing: the banks examined in the Pew report have continued to reserve the right to process withdrawals by dollar amount, rather than chronologically. This practice “maximizes the number of times an account goes negative, thus increasing overdraft fees” – and the banks can choose to reorder transactions whenever they want

.

.

Cat Marnell, the drug-addicted beauty columnist for Jane Pratt’s Web site xoJane.com, has parted ways from the site after refusing to get clean. Marnell chronicled her drug use on xoJane.com, and was profiled by New York magazine in April, the day before she entered rehab, as ordered by xoJane.com publisher Say Media. But sources say Marnell never stayed clean, with one suspecting she even worked high. “I’m always on drugs,” she wrote to us in an unapologetic e-mail. “Look, I couldn’t spend another summer meeting deadlines behind a computer at night when I could be on the rooftop of Le Bain looking for shooting stars and smoking angel dust with my friends and writing a book, which is what I’m doing next.” Marnell, formerly a beauty editor at Lucky, admitted she’s not fit for the 9-to-5. “Drug addicts undeniably bring editorial black magic to the table like nobody else, but obviously we make the worst staffers,” she wrote us.

R. Kelly reportedly owes $4.8 million in back taxes after ‘not paying anything’ on his superstar earnings for almost seven years. The ‘I Believe I Can Fly’ singer stopped paying taxes in 2005, according to documents filed by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Despite the huge bill, the twice Grammy nominated singer is ‘confident’ the matter can be resolved.

Taking a closer look at the federal complaint against the five men reveals that although the suspects are believed to have expressed anti-government sentiments and disdain for major financial corporations, the impetus in the would-be bombing was the urging of undercover agents that had infiltrated a group of friends and encouraged them to consider acts of terrorism. Although the incident is still developing, federal authorities have submitted statements and recordings stemming from conversations their contacts had with the alleged terrorists, and unsurprisingly the mainstream media is largely ignoring one key problem with the federal probe: the FBI provoked members of an Occupy Wall Street off-shoot to embrace terrorist-like crimes despite voicing from the start that they were opposed to such.

✖ Miami Face-Chewing Victim: victim in the Miami “zombie” attack may have been shot by police

All that “zombie” watercooler talk may have subsided, but doctors working with the Miami face-chewing victim revealed another bizarre twist in the case Tuesday: The man, now awake and alert, may have been shot twice by the police during the attack.

Anyone notice a cloud hanging over the Mall last week? That might have been the White House softball team getting absolutely smoked by the team fielded by the marijuana lobby. The One Hitters, the team of pro-pot activists, beat STOTUS (the Softball Team of the U.S.) 25-3. Marijuana doesn’t seem to dampen athletic prowess (which we already knew — hello, Michael Phelps!). Still, the victors were gracious about the rout. “The One Hitters enjoyed slugging it out with the White House,” said Aaron Houston, executive director of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, the group that sponsors the team. “Hopefully we can play them again when they aren’t totally absorbed in work.”

A 9-year-old girl faces months of tests to determine if she contracted any disease from a blood-caked syringe that pricked her heel inside a Washington hotel room. The dirty needle was left beneath the mattress cover of her bunk bed at the Guest House Inn and Suites in Aberdeen, where the girl and her family were attending a softball tournament, authorities said. Angie Smith, the mother of shortstop Emily, said the family was appalled to find the paraphernalia. “There were syringes, plastic bags, bloody bandages all underneath the mattress cover,” Smith told KOMO-TV. “We were really shocked and freaking out. It scare us to death.”

✖ Mom, Daughter Arrested After Girl Fight In Antelope Park

“She brought her daughter fully in Vaseline up on her face and arms,” Julian said, “to get her and to beat her and to rip her clothes off, which she did. She managed to tear the shirt to where my daughter’s breast came out during the fight at the park.”

She admits that her own first experience with butt shots could have been just as dangerous, as she had no idea what she was injected with – and still doubts the answer she was given. ‘The first two times, I was injected by a lady… when we finally asked her [what we were being injected with], she said soybean oil. So my first two times I had no idea what I was being injected with. ‘All the rest were done by [a different] lady, and it was medical grade silicone.’ She says the difference in the two substances was huge. The silicone, she says, is ‘a lot more moveable and jello-like. The ‘soybean oil’ made the treated areas ‘stiff and hard’. Describing her butt now, Vanity said: ‘Because that original work has been covered so many times, it’s all jiggly and very moveable. A lot of people are amazed.’

How much more food stamp money is Walmart getting across the country? We don’t know, because USDA and state agencies refuse to release this information. We also have no clue how much money the likes of Coca-Cola, Kraft, and General Mills make from SNAP. The feds don’t even bother to collect that data, despite a national epidemic of diet-related chronic diseases fueled in part by your tax dollars. Then add healthcare on top of that. But one area of profit from food stamps is quite transparent: food corporations and industry groups have been lobbying intensely to make sure that junk food such as candy and soda can be purchased using SNAP. As New York City and nine states have pushed for health-based reforms to limit such purchases, these industry lobbies have pushed back hard to protect their pot of gold. Powerful food industry lobbying groups such as the American Beverage Association and the Snack Food Association teamed up to oppose health-oriented improvements to SNAP

Mexico’s biggest television network sold prominent politicians favourable coverage in its flagship news and entertainment shows and used the same programmes to smear a popular leftwing leader, documents seen by the Guardian appear to show. The documents – which consist of dozens of computer files – emerge just weeks ahead of presidential elections on 1 July, and coincide with the appearance of an energetic protest movement accusing the Televisa network of manipulating its coverage to favour the leading candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto.

It’s been nearly 20 years since Clarence Aaron was put in jail for conspiring to distribute crack cocaine, and unless President Obama steps in, the 19-year veteran of the American prison system is expected to stay there for a while. A long while. Aaron wasn’t buying, selling or even touching coke when cops busted the then 23-year-old college student in 1993. Instead Aaron was simply a witness of a plotted crack transaction and associate of the buyer and seller, who, unlike him, pled guilty and gave law enforcement their full cooperation. But despite lacking any criminal record at all, however, Aaron was sentenced to serve three life sentences behind bars for his role in a would-be drug deal. Neither President Clinton nor George W. Bush offered a commutation to kill the lengthy sentence during their combined 16 years in office, and new evidence reveals that there may have been a reason for that.

✖ Israel rounds up African migrants for deportation

Israel said on Monday it had started rounding up African migrants in the first stage of a controversial “emergency plan” to intern and deport thousands deemed a threat to the Jewish character of the state. Israel Radio reported that dozens of Africans, mainly from South Sudan, had already been detained in the Red Sea resort of Eilat, including mothers and children. “This is only a small group of the infiltrators,” Interior Minister Eli Yishai said. “I’m not acting out of hatred of strangers but love of my people and to rescue the homeland.”

A California performance of Cirque Du Soleil turned into “Sex Du Soleil” recently when two U.S. border agents allegedly had sex in front of other audience members before attacking them. Broadcast reports indicate Kallie Helwig was performing oral sex on Gerald Torello Jr. in plain view of others including children during the May 27 event at the Del Mar Fairgrounds near San Diego. “She had her head in his lap. It looked like her head and her hand were moving up and down and it looked like she was giving him oral sex in public,” an unidentified female witness told KFMB-TV. The witness also claims Torello, the male agent, gave a 5-year-old boy a high-five during the incident, and there were other children present at the time.

Morris took that to mean someone tapped into the air conditioning units to steal the Freon, which can be inhaled, or “huffed,” to get high. Inhaling Freon produces a high that is similar to what is felt from drinking alcohol, and doing so can freeze the lungs or cause brain damage. It can also prove fatal, Morris warned, citing several recent examples, including a teenager in Oklahoma who died in November. “He was still in the yard next to the unit,” Morris said of that death. “So it is a one-time thing. You do it and it could kill you.” Californian Jacob Henry, 18, died in September after huffing Freon. “Huffing is a game of Russian roulette,” his mother Gail told Los Angeles’ KABC last fall. “Don’t ever consider doing it because that five seconds of high that you get when you do it, it isn’t worth dying over.”

It found the defendant, Anthony Nicholas Orban, a Marine veteran of the Iraq War, guilty of two counts of rape, two counts of forced oral copulation, two of sexual penetration with a foreign object, one count of making a criminal threat, and a sentence enhancement of using a firearm in commission of a kidnapping. Orban faces a sanity hearing before sentencing. Defense attorney James Blatt had argued that Orban was rendered “unconscious” by use of the antidepressant, and therefore was not responsible for his actions in the brutal 2010 attack in Fontana. A defense psychiatrist testified that Orban had stopped taking the prescribed antidepressant, then resumed it at full dose, provoking a psychotic break during which he was not fully aware of his actions. But prosecutors said such a defense was “baloney” that ran counter to medical consensus on the drug’s effects. Orban had been out drinking and seeking sexual encounters before he kidnapped the victim at gunpoint and made her drive to

5-28-11 at Sky Harbor International in Phoenix, AZ my mother was sexually assaulted which brought her to tears. Multiple TSA agents claimed to know my whole family (WELCOME TO 1984) TSA then threatened to steal my luggage because I left it unattended… rather because I was 10 feet from it. I was then threatened to have my ability to fly revoked by Southwest Airlines, NOT TSA. Southwest Airlines then threatened to have me arrested for filming the event, even though TSA, Southwest, and Phoenix Police couldn’t provide me with the statute or law that claims I cannot film in a public area. Here is that event. Police- Protecting and Serving??? Why is TSA asking for my father’s phone number and address at the end of this ordeal, to add us to a no-fly list or spy on us?

The hydrogen sulfide contained in flatus has the ability to help reduce blood pressure, according to a recent medical study, yet researchers at Zhongda Hospital at Southeast University in Nanjing are still unsure of the amount needed to be beneficial and whether patients are willing to accept “eating farts” as a form of treatment, reports our Chinese-language sister newspaper Want Daily. The smell of flatus comes from hydrogen sulfide, a substance that has been proven effective in controlling blood pressure in mice in an experiment at John Hopkins University. The study has been published in the journal Science. Thanks Jasmine

“The cursing has gotten very, very bad. I find it appalling and I won’t tolerate it,” said Ms. Duphily, a civic leader in the otherwise quiet New England community, which calls itself the Cranberry Capital of the World. “No person should be allowed to talk in that manner.” Soon, Middleborough residents who do could risk a $20 fine. Ms. Duphily, 63 years old, tried scolding the cursers—whom she describes as young people shouting the “F word” back and forth—with a stern, “Hey kids, that’s enough!” Then she conferred with the Beautification and Activities Group, which informed the Middleborough Business Coalition, which then called a summit with Middleborough Police Chief Bruce Gates, who now, in his sworn role, is trying to stomp out swears.

A 24-year-old Massachusetts woman who allegedly masqueraded as a teenage boy is facing federal charges for engaging in illicit sexual conduct with a 15-year-old girl who was unaware that the boyfriend she met online was actually a female

Many of these rabbis have their wealth in nonprofit organizations. But each has absolute control over their nonprofits and each uses them for any purpose they choose, often as their personal checkbooks. For example, Pinto allegedly buys custom made suits for his teenage son and high end collectible watches by the fistful using money donated to help the poor. Many of these rabbis have extensive private real estate holdings and business investments, as well and some have paid millions of dollars in settlements to Israel’s Tax Authority, its version of the IRS, to settle tax fraud charges. But the Israeli government is reluctant to press criminal charges against most of these rabbis because they control large voting blocs and, in the case of the Gerrer Rebbe, control a political party that has often had the ability to make or break government coalitions.

Surveillance video from a Boynton Beach 7-Eleven store shows an attack during which a woman was set on fire Monday morning.

I’ve been very happy so far with the Crystals implant for Cataract Surgery – after a lifetime of glasses, it’s life-changing to be able see good! I expected some color shifts since my natural cloudy/yellow lens was replaced and it’s wonderful seeing a “brighter more vivid” world. But one unexpected/interesting aspect is I see a violet glow that others do not – perhaps I’m more sensitive to the low end of the visible light spectrum. While I don’t have a “Sixth Sense” that allows me to say “I see dead people” (!), I suspect I’m actually seeing Ultraviolet light! 😉

Anti-Semitic apparel: The Anti-Defamation League once went after Urban Outfitters for selling shirts with the slogan “Everyone Loves a Jewish Girl” and pictures of dollar bills and shopping bags. The company also once sold yellow shirts with a Star of David on the pocket, which of course has horrible connotations. “Pro-ana” apparel: Who in their right mind would sell a shirt to young women with the slogan “Eat Less?” Urban Outfitters, that’s who. “Ghettopoly”: It’s like Monopoly, but shockingly racist! The game, which drew the ire of the NAACP among other groups, featured liquor stores, “Ghetto Stash” cards, and crack, basketball and pimp playing pieces. “You got yo whole neighborhood addicted to crack. Collect $50 from each playa,” read one space on the game board. The color “Obama black”: A few years ago, Urban Outfitters put a henley T-shirt in its online shop that came in the colors “White/Charcoal” and “Obama/Black.” Nothing to add.

Didier Fiuza Faustino created this awesome billboard swing for an installation entitled Double Happiness. This “urban reanimation device” was created for the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Bi-City Biennial of Urbanism and Architecture in 2009. “Double Happiness responds to the society of materialism where individual desires seem to be prevailing over all. This nomad piece of urban furniture allows the reactivation of different public spaces and enables inhabitants to reappropriate fragments of their city. They will both escape and dominate public space through a game of equilibrium and desequilibrium. By playing this “risky” game, and testing their own limits, two persons can experience together a new perception of space and recover an awareness of the physical world.”

At age 49, Junior Alexander Guy got his first cell phone last month. The calls started immediately. Strangers called at all hours. Some were insulting. Others angry. Sometimes, they threatened him. “You murderer!” “You deserve to die!” By Day 2 he figured out what was going on: T-Mobile had given him the phone number formerly used by George Zimmerman, the Neighborhood Watch volunteer who fatally shot Trayvon Martin in February. The number —407-435-2400 — was the one Zimmerman spelled out to a police dispatcher in a recorded call the night of the shooting that has since been widely circulated by news organizations and is available on the Internet. Guy, who works at an Orlando wastewater plant, said his phone rang around the clock. “At 2 o’clock, 3 o’clock in the morning I kept getting these,” he said. He estimates he received 70 threatening calls. He has moved out of his home and relocated his mother, who had lived with him, to a different location, he said.

Nathaniel Garber Schoen, co-owner of Garber Hardware in the West Village, says customers eager to get tied up rather than secure lumber have a telltale sign: They request softer nylon material. In which case Schoen recommends the 12-gauge, non-braided nylon — “Anything skinnier is too small. You might hurt yourself,” he says of the rope, $18 for a 50-foot spool. “For those purposes, 12-gauge is a reasonable choice and the most popular.”

China competes with us as a country. But our businesses see themselves as GLOBALIZED, not as part of a country. So since we – at least our businesses – no longer see themselves as part of a country we are not responding to this competition. We are not mobilizing to fight back. In fact, China has essentially recruited our own business leaders to fight against our own government. Look at the effects on our country since we entered into this deal with China. They are luring our businesses to move our jobs, factories, industries and technologies there for the private gain of a few, at the expense of us as a country, and we let that happen. The trade imbalance is bankrupting us as a country. It has already drained trillions from our economy, weakening us and strengthening them. They are smart, they do this as a NATIONAL strategy, as a country competing with us as a country, and the result is that in a competition between countries we may have already lost.

Wayne Roberts was a pioneering 1970s graffiti writer known as “Stay High 149” who borrowed the haloed stick figure from the title sequence of the 1960s television series “The Saint,” put a joint in its mouth and turned it around. His “Smoker” tag, or signature, turned the heads of legions of imitators and admirers, including the anonymous teenagers who slipped into train yards at night to paint whole cars, as well as Norman Mailer, who featured him in his book “The Faith of Graffiti.” Mr. Roberts, who disappeared from the scene for some 25 years until he was rediscovered by a new generation of fans and artists in 2000, died on Monday at Calvary Hospital in the Bronx. He was 61.

The biker bar claims in the lawsuit that burnouts are among several activities patrons participate in while “expressing their manliness and macho, as all males are prone and inclined to do to a greater or lesser degree.” The bar says a burnout is an expressive motorcycle act that is protected by the First Amendment.

There are lots of thieves in China, and they are all very brave! In the following, we will have two videos to show you how those professional thieves using a pair of chopsticks to steal people’s mobile phone

For a reason or reasons unknown, but possibly explained by the lighter and what may or may not be a baggie of contraband on his lap, 21-year-old Steven Mulhall stole Judge Michael Orlando’s nameplate from the door of the judge’s courtroom in Broward County, Florida. At some point thereafter, Mulhall posed for this picture with his prize, and his girlfriend appears to have posted it on Facebook. (They are only the latest in a growing horde of people who don’t seem to understand that by posting things on the “Internet,” you make them “public,” thus creating potentially incriminating “evidence.”) A tipster told police about the photo and gave them Mulhall’s name and address.

Police arrested 52-year-old Dr. Anthony Monteleone on Wednesday in the back parking lot of his office. They say he was caught snorting lines of suspected cocaine and then going inside Katsur Dental and Orthodontics in Edgewood to treat his patients. Undercover agents grabbed Monteleone after they witnessed him using what appeared to be cocaine. “There was a police officer observing what appeared to be drug use,” Edgewood Police Chief Robert Payne said. “It was outside the car.” Chief Payne, who made the arrest, asked Dr. Monteleone if he had a problem. The doctor, according to the criminal complaint, admitted to using marijuana, Xanax and cocaine.

The art world’s most intriguingly anonymous character, Banksy, is known for appropriating all sorts of outdoor and arguably “public” spaces. Who else does that? The advertising industry of course. I think one has to agree with his sentiments, albeit with a wry smile given his own predilection for placing his art in places our eyeballs can’t avoid. Here’s his statement

The Hopkins group that Johnson is part of has been investigating the use of psilocybin, the hallucinogen in “magic mushrooms,” for smoking cessation and to help terminal cancer patients cope with their illness. They’ve also taken a look at Salvinorin A, a hallucinogen in salvia, too. Why would hallucinogens be suited for these kinds of treatments? Johnson said people taking the drugs in the studies he’s helped with report that it is “one of the most meaningful experiences — or the most meaningful — in their life.” Some says the “trip” changes the direction of their lives and can trigger a redefinition of how they see themselves. That could be as profound as, “I’m now a nondrinker, or whatever the adciction may be,” he said.

✖ The Language of Persuasion – Government Or Regime?

“Police are warning that when cannabis plants reach the final stages of maturity the odour they release has carcinogenic properties. “Officers who deal with the plants use ventilation masks and protective suits and people who have plants in their home, especially anyone with young children, may be exposing their family to a health risk.”

✖ From Road Salt to Pink Goo, What’s In the Food?

In the modern-day world in which we live you never really know to what extent the corrupt globalists will go to profiteer from adding deadly poisons, toxins, drugs, and chemicals to our food and water supply. Not only do we have to pay attention as consumers to fluoride levels in our drinking water, now we must watch for a whole slew of toxic and gruesome additives in the foods we eat.

Neil Hope grew up in the 1980s before an audience of millions as a star in a pair of gritty Canadian television dramas, “Degrassi Junior High” and its sequel, “Degrassi High.” The shows were cultural touchstones in Canada and cult favorites in the United States, where they anticipated teenage docudramas like MTV’s “Real World” and soaps like “Beverly Hills, 90210.”

The researchers found that thrill-seeking is not limited to humans and other vertebrates. The brains of honeybees that were more likely than others to seek adventure exhibited distinct patterns of gene activity in molecular pathways known to be associated with thrill-seeking in humans. The findings present a new perspective on honeybee communities, which were thought to be highly regimented and comprised of a colony of interchangeable workers taking on a few specific roles to serve their queen. It now seems as though individual honeybees differ in their desire to perform particular tasks and these differences could be down to variability in bees’ personalities. This supports a 2011 study at Newcastle University that suggested that honeybees exhibit pessimism, suggesting that insects might have feelings.

Being a Nazi, this public servant obviously didn’t miss an opportunity to couch as many of these regulations as he could in racist or anti-Semitic terms. Such, after all, are the National Socialist equivalent of soothing conventional wisdom. But that’s just it: If you’re a Nazi, and you can pass something you don’t like off as a “Negroid excess,” or a manifestation of “Jewish Fremason-ry,” it helps you with the kind of Nazi cred you need insulate yourself from having to justify what’s wrong with the music as music. More than that, it helps you hide your fear of the deeper resonance the music has with people as people. In an interview given in Prague in 1968, relayed in Talkin’ Moscow Blues, Skvorecky noted that “jazz is, above all, a kind of fraternity.” That’s not an entirely obvious thought if you come from the same part of the world jazz itself does.

Keeping the artificial intelligence genie trapped in the proverbial bottle could turn an apocalyptic threat into a powerful oracle that solves humanity’s problems, said Roman Yampolskiy, a computer scientist at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. But successful containment requires careful planning so that a clever breed of artificial intelligence cannot simply threaten, bribe, seduce or hack its way to freedom. “It can discover new attack pathways, launch sophisticated social-engineering attacks and re-use existing hardware components in unforeseen ways,” Yampolskiy said. “Such software is not limited to infecting computers and networks — it can also attack human psyches, bribe, blackmail and brainwash those who come in contact with it.”

The TSA is clearly no fan of the 4th Amendment, nor of 5th Amendment due process rights, and now this blatant attempt to manipulate the free press with “strong caution” hits at Amendment the First. Why strong caution? Are there repercussions for journalists that fail to heed this “advice?” Because, you know, if I were a member of the free press and the federal government asked me to censor myself, I’d happily comply . . . . . . . . . riiight. I have news for the federal government: Americans will not take censorship in any form. We thought we made this clear when you tried to force SOPA on us.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: Setting your Facebook page to “friends only” and your Twitter feed to private is a good idea, especially if you’re hunting for a job or trying to get into the college of your choice. You want to be selective in the details you reveal about yourself and, quite frankly, what you post on a social network is none of their damned business. But it appears even that may not be enough to protect you any more. Bob Sullivan of MSNBC reports that some state agencies and colleges are forcing prospective employees and students to grant them full access to their social networks.

✖ Kony 2012 Hoax Exposed

Kony 2012 is but another piece of slick propaganda designed to tug on the heart strings – and the purse strings – of ignorant Americans who are clueless about the real reasons why the globalists are now moving into Africa in a big way. Invisible Children’s connections to USAID and thus the CIA should put the effort in context. Africa is one of several targets prized by the globalists as they move to grab vital natural resources, consolidate power and unleash their monetary enslavement and world totalitarian government end game around the globe.

Today is an incredibly sad day for fans of comic books, concept art, and downright anything science fiction. Artist Jean “Moebius” Giraud, who provided some of the most stunning scifi and fantasy art ever to grace a page, has succumbed to illness at the age of 73. It’s pretty hard to overstate the hand Moebius had in some of science fiction’s most phantasmagoric cinema. You know his work even if you’ve never realized it. In addition to providing preliminary designs for such films as Alien, Tron, The Abyss, Masters of the Universe, The Fifth Element, and Willow (which were awesome albeit unused), the artist provided concept art for El Topo director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s never-realized Dune adaptation, which was to star Mick Jagger and boast a soundtrack by Pink Floyd.

In the New Yorker article, Jane Mayer quotes you as saying, “I actually had hopes for Obama.” What’s your opinion on the Obama administration’s stated support for whistle-blowers and, more generally, his counterterrorism record? Worse than Bush. I have to say that. I actually voted for Obama. It’s all rhetoric for me now. As Americans we were hoodwinked. He’s expanding the secrecy regime far beyond what the Bush even intended, interestingly enough. I think Bush is probably like, “Whoa.”

In October, Mother Jones revealed that the FBI is notorious for creating supposed terrorist groups from scratch and then framing patsies in order to claim the government is protecting the United States from terrorists and also breathe life into an otherwise moribund war on mostly nonexistent terrorism. Sabu’s role as an FBI provocateur working inside LulzSec reveals the government is attempting to do the same in order to push its so-called cybersecurity agenda. The establishment is eager to pass a raft of legislation to closely regulate the internet, strip the medium of its anonymity, and close it down as an activism and alternative media tool.

That is what the census says. Andrew Leonard in Salon notes that it is a bit misleading, that “4.7 million are for “seasonal use” only, the Census tells us — unoccupied vacation homes, in other words. 4.1 million are for rent, 2.3 million are for sale, and the remaining 7.5 million “were vacant for a variety of other reasons.” The census also lists the total number of homeless in America as 759,101, so there are 24 empty houses for every homeless person in America. What a shocking misallocation of resources, materials and energy.

Gerald Zirnstein grinds his own hamburger these days. Why? Because this former United States Department of Agriculture scientist and, now, whistleblower, knows that 70 percent of the ground beef we buy at the supermarket contains something he calls “pink slime.” “Pink slime” is beef trimmings. Once only used in dog food and cooking oil, the trimmings are now sprayed with ammonia so they are safe to eat and added to most ground beef as a cheaper filler. It was Zirnstein who, in an USDA memo, first coined the term “pink slime” and is now coming forward to say he won’t buy it. “It’s economic fraud,” he told ABC News. “It’s not fresh ground beef. … It’s a cheap substitute being added in.”

This video is here to demonstrate that the TSA’s insistence that the nude body scanner program is effective and necessary is nothing but a fraud, just like their claims that the program is safe (radiation what?) and non-invasive (nude pictures who?). The scanners are now effectively worthless, as anyone can beat them with virtually no effort. The TSA has been provided this video in advance of it being made public to give them an opportunity to turn off the scanners and revert to the metal detectors. I personally believe they now have no choice but to turn them off.

Planned Parenthood exposes children to sexual material in order to seed a generation of sex addicts, who will become future customers for the abortion giant. This report exposes Planned Parenthood’s sex-education programs, using images from Planned Parenthood’s own websites, social networks, and events.

The secret’s out: Men are wearing tights. Pantyhose for men, or “mantyhose,” have been popular throughout Europe for years and now the trend – even outside the ballet barre – has crept stateside.

Today’s leading cola beverages contain high levels of a substance linked to cancer in animals, according to new research. An independent study commissioned by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) uncovered 4-methylimidazole, or 4-MI, in Coke, Diet Coke, Pepsi and Diet Pepsi at levels 4.8 times greater than those allowed in beverages in California. 4-MI is a byproduct of the reaction that produces the caramel coloring in brown sodas. The chemical has been found to be carcinogenic in animal studies. The state of California has banned 4-MI in any amount that could potentially lead to one cancer case in 100,000 people. However the levels found in these 4 leading Cola brands indicated a lifetime risk of 5 cancers out of 100,000, assuming that people drink one soft drink per day. That risk rises to 10 cancers out of 100,000 people who drink only soft drinks containing caramel coloring.

Anderson Cooper attempted, and miserably failed, to mitigate the damage from the discovery that one of the poster boys for foreign intervention in Syria was manufacturing complete propaganda for Western consumption. The video below is the original video exposing “Danny” as a vicious propagandist actively working against the interests of the Syrian people. This is just more exploitation of the good intentions of people around the world for nefarious ends. These revelations further damage the credibility of the already highly untrustworthy Syrian rebels, much like the Libyan rebels delegitimized themselves. Stay weary of the effort to push us into military intervention in Syria and question all sources of information and the “statistics” we are fed by the Western establishment media. Keep in mind none of this is confirmed, the sources have a political interest in disseminating disinformation and so do those who report the claims made by so-called activists as gospel.

Two Cambridge graduates have thought of a clever way of making enough money to pay the debts they built up attending university. Facing a combined bill of £50,000 ($80,000), Ed Moyse and Ross Harper started a business called Buy My Face. The product: advertising space on their faces. The pair started by selling the space to family and friends for just £1-per-day, but the price is now up to £400-per-day.they even have a sponsor in Ernst & Young. They started the business last October and it appears to still be going strong.

A dozen earthquakes in northeastern Ohio were almost certainly induced by injection of gas-drilling wastewater into the earth, Ohio oil and gas regulators said Friday as they announced a series of tough new regulations for drillers.

The HIV rate among black women living in some U.S. cities is the same rate as that of some African countries, according to a new multicenter study presented Thursday at the 19th Conference of Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections. The jarring findings acknowledge that HIV is not an infection that has been eradicated, but one that has been somewhat forgotten, researchers said. The new data come from the ISIS study (The Women’s HIV Seroincidence Study), and reflect an analysis of at-risk women in six urban areas of the United States that have some of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS: Baltimore, Atlanta, Raleigh-Durham, N.C., Washington, D.C., Newark and New York City. “This disease is alive and well in this country,” said Dr. Carlos Del Rio, principal investigator for the Atlanta area of the study and professor of medicine and infectious disease at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. “But this epidemic is the face of the forgotten people.”

A new condom that aims to enhance erections may also lift earnings and buyout prospects for unprofitable U.K. drugmaker Futura Medical Plc. Durex condoms made by partner Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc will contain a dose of Futura’s Zanifil gel inside the tip, boosting blood flow within the penis. The product results in firmer, larger and longer-lasting erections for men who may find wearing condoms challenging, according to Futura.

Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova are accused of hooliganism over the incident last month in which four members of the group cavorted and shouted a song protesting against the rule of Vladimir Putin in front of the iconostasis of the Christ the Saviour Cathedral. Mr Putin’s spokesman has described the performance as “disgusting” and said the prime minister and president-elect regarded it “negatively”. The two young women were arrested the night before Mr Putin won a third term in the Kremlin on Sunday, and have been remanded in custody until a trial next month. Pussy Riot formed in October last year and has focused on guerrilla activism against Putin, including an impromptu concert on Red Square. Its members use pseudonyms and wear brightly-coloured balaclavas and clothes for performances and interviews.

Rumors started among students, and then instructors, about the teacher’s alter persona before it came to the attention of Haydock Intermediate School officials. The district superintendent told KCAL9 that the videos do not involve any Oxnard school district students. According to a written notice sent to parents Tuesday, the school says the teacher does not face any criminal charges but has been placed on administrative leave: Oxnard Middle School Teacher Pulled From Classroom Amid Rumors Shes Working As Hard Core Porn Actress (credit: CBS) “It has been alleged that one of our teachers is depicted in at least one pornographic video and possibly others on the internet…These sites contain extremely graphic and inappropriate pornographic material.”The notice also warns parents to keep students away from social media sites, inappropriate outside networks and smartphones. The 30-year-old instructor’s identity has been withheld while the allegations are being investigated.

The issue that should have sparked panic in the survey is the total consensus among Israeli Jews – regardless of religious, ethnic or political differences – that the “guiding principle” for the country and for Judaism itself is “to remember the Holocaust.” Ninety-eight percent of the respondents consider it either fairly important or very important to remember the Holocaust, attributing to it even more weight than to living in Israel, the Sabbath, the Passover seder and the feeling of belonging to the Jewish people.

Students were told they were taking part in a study of how funds should be distributed in college – and offered a range of ethnic-based groups to share money between. After listening to Bruce Springsteen and the White Stripes, the students handed most of the money to white people. ‘Rock music is generally associated with white Americans, so we believe it cues white listeners to think about their positive association with their own in-group,’ said Heather LaMarre, an assistant professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Minnesota. ‘That was enough for them to show more support for a student group representing mostly whites.’ After listening to Top 40 pop such as Gwen Stefani, Akon and Fergie, the students divided money more equally between white people, black people and latinos.

A commonly prescribed drug used to treat high blood pressure may have the unintended benefit of muting racist thoughts in those who take it. A new Oxford University research study found that Propranolol, which works to combat high blood pressure, anxiety, migraines, and a number of heart ailments, affects the same part of the central nervous system that regulates subconscious attitudes on race.

✖ Pat Robertson: Pot should be legal like alcohol

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson says marijuana should be legalized and treated like alcohol because the government’s war on drugs has failed. The outspoken evangelical Christian and host of “The 700 Club” on the Virginia Beach-based Christian Broadcasting Network he founded said the war on drugs is costing taxpayers billions of dollars. He said people should not be sent to prison for marijuana possession. The 81-year-old first became a self-proclaimed “hero of the hippie culture” in 2010 when he called for ending mandatory prison sentences for marijuana possession convictions.

They call him “Twenty-Four.” Yoandri Hernandez Garrido’s nickname comes from the six perfectly formed fingers on each of his hands and the six impeccable toes on each foot. Hernandez is proud of his extra digits and calls them a blessing, saying they set him apart and enable him to make a living by scrambling up palm trees to cut coconuts and posing for photographs in this eastern Cuban city popular with tourists. One traveler paid $10 for a picture with him, Hernandez said, a bonanza in a country with an average salary of just $20 a month. “It’s thanks to my 24 digits that I’m able to make a living, because I have no fixed job,” Hernandez said.

✖ Celebrities with STDs – Famous People with STDs – STIs – VD

Famous Celebrities with Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) Welcome to the celebrities section of the STD Carrier Registry. Here you can browse our list of idolized (and not so idolized) people from Hollywood, professional sports, pornography, politics, literary writing, activism, and other notable segments of society. All celebs on the list correspond to detailed profiles containing pictures, some videos, and references to news reports.

Love is supposed to be everlasting. Unfortunately for many, the only permanent thing to come out of a relationship is an incurable sexually transmitted disease. And that’s why Cyrus Sullivan, of Portland, Ore., claims that he runs STD Carriers Disease Control and Prevention Services, a website that lists claimed and confirmed carriers by their names, locations, descriptions, and sometimes their photos. The database is completely open to the public — you don’t have to login to browse the listings, and many of the recently added carriers’ pics are displayed prominently on the site’s front page. Users submit photos freely. There are about 1,500 listings.

Watch out Facebook and Foursquare: there’s a new site that allows users to “check-in” when they are having, uh… protected sex! There’s a new batch of condoms with wrappers equipped with a QR code – a scannable barcode – giving users the ability to “check-in” when they use the contraceptive, according to Planned Parenthood. After scanning the QR code, users check in on wheredidyouwearit.com. The website displays an interactive map showing where users have checked in at. Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest (PPGNW) released 55,000 condoms to colleges and universities in Washington state in honor of National Condom Week, which was Feb. 14 to Feb. 21.

It shows a couple of fights, one between two women just outside the mall that was broken up by a mall security guard and another inside the mall between what appears to be young males. In one scene, a man is knocked to the mall floor and appears unconscious. Other males can be seen running. After the incident, stores were briefly on lockdown and the video shows frightened shoppers trying to exit the mall. In December, police said they arrested three people in connection with the fights.

Lafayette said she was inside her home taking a nap on Saturday when someone knocked on her door. When she stepped outside, several Newton County deputies were in her yard. “I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, don’t tell me that the dogs got out,'” she said. She was worried her dogs got out and attacked someone. “A deputy told me I didn’t do anything wrong, I was the victim. I said, ‘Victim!’ I’m thinking, ‘Wait a minute, did someone kill my dog?’ He said, ‘No the neighbor behind you, they saw the teenager having sex with your female dogs.’ I said, ‘Having sex with my female dogs?’ I think they must have got it wrong,” said Lafayette. Lafayette didn’t believe them until they showed her the video her neighbors recorded. “And it showed him on his knees inside the kennel with my dog. He was on his knees like he was a dog,” said Lafayette. Police arrested 19-year old Bernard Archer and charged him with two counts of bestiality

Three male teachers at a US high school have been arrested and charged on suspicion of child seduction after admitted to passing around a 16-year-old student. Officials were called in after the male student revealed on 18 January the school band director, a swimming coach and a substitute Spanish teacher all engaged in physical relationships with him several times on school grounds. The boy, who cannot be name for legal reasons, claimed that many of the alleged acts, which range from touching and kissing to having sex in a car, took place on the grounds of North Putnam High School in Roachdale, central Indiana. According to Indiana state police, those arrested and charged were: substitute Spanish teacher Nicholas Vester, 24, who worked at the school for 12 weeks last autumn; band director Craig Rogers, 24, currently on paid leave; and volunteer swimming coach Brandon Largent, 20, a student at Ivy Tech community college.